Low Quality Sound in-game playing

Development Audio
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1

Good morning everybody,

By importing wav files within the Content browser and placing them within a WavePlayer in the Metasounds, their quality remains the same. The moment I start the simulation, the sounds lose a lot of their quality. I am new to Unreal Engine so please bear with me if I should point out something obvious.

It seems that the sound turns from stereo to mono and loses about 50% of its original quality.

As a first step I checked the audio Project Settings but to no avail.

My version of Unreal is 5.3.

I have tried to solve the problem in the following ways but to no avail:

  1. Sample Rate: UE recommends a sample rate of 44,100 Hz at 16Bit. I also checked the settings in the project settings for the Audio Mixer sample rate to match 44,100 and for the Max Resempling quality to be set to 44,100. I also tried importing Wav with a higher Sample Rate and at 24Bit but nothing.

  2. From the Wav File settings I tried all Default Audio Compression Type; theoretically with PCM I should have no compression at all and albeit with higher CPU usage the quality should remain the same. I also tried different types of compression and eliminating it altogether but nothing.

  3. I tried looking at Metasound’s settings, disabling my Default Attenuation Setting but to no avail. I also checked that Sound Class and Sound Class Mix had no settings that affected the quality (they are just channels for grouping sounds into categories).

Also in the Project Settings there is no real General Audio Output section but it is referred only to the platforms. For example, if one wanted to set the output to 5.1 or 7.1? Does one take Metasound or Wavfile as a reference? Could it be that there is no general output management system?

I thank you for your attention and hope to solve the problem as soon as possible.

Leonardo Furore

2

Can you elaborate on the issue of quality? Is it just stereo becoming mono, or other issues?

I’ve noticed some alarming behaviour with even uncompressed wav data outside of this, which reminds me I meant to send a bug about.

3

In terms of quality it’s like if the Sample Rate decrease from 44.100 to at least half of the quality. To give you a simple example, it is as if you sent a wav file through what’s app. The file loses a lot of its quality.

4

Hi sorry was away and only just saw your reply.

My phone number is public on my profile here? I should remove that! :sweat_smile: Apologies if I didn’t get your message.

5

Check CompressionQualityModifier for Window platform in you project settings. It should be >0 (1 default)

1 Like
6

Thank you very much! After changing this, the sound quality has improved, quality has started to work, and the PCM no longer has the current sound.