Delivering to the Engine
Sample rate, loop points, loudness and naming, one mistake means a redo
Related
The problem
The music sounds fine in the DAW and changes once it reaches the engine. A wrong sample rate shifts the pitch, a loop point a few samples off clicks on every pass, loudness that was never unified jumps at a scene change, and chaotic naming means nobody can find the file. The rework usually lands on the last day.
How it works
The engine plays by sample, so any loop whose length is not a whole number of samples has a seam. Resampling changes the top end, and 44.1 kHz material entering a 48 kHz project goes through one conversion that damages cymbals and sibilance first. Loudness is a separate line, normalized to LUFS by the platform, but normalizing every loop individually destroys the relationship between layers. Tempo, meter and loop points in the file header decide how the engine reads the audio.
Practice
Lock sample rate, bit depth and channel count before delivery and write them into the documentation. Place loop points on whole samples and state BPM and meter in the file. Normalize loudness across the whole set rather than file by file. Name files with a fixed field order, project, category, name, variant, version. After importing into middleware, audition every file and check loops, fades and random container behaviour. Finally listen on the target device, since a phone speaker and headphones are far apart. Clear delivery notes save more time than explanations later. Leave a day for checks before the build.
What to listen for
In Widor's Organ Symphony No. 5, a held bass under high overtones, where resampling shows first. In Dragonetti's double bass concerto, whether the low end survives in mono; in Brahms's A German Requiem, how much a wide dynamic is squashed by loudness matching; in prehistoric-drum-loop, whether the loop point is clean. These are the faults that appear first after import.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Sources
- 音频交付到游戏引擎的格式与元数据要求，依中间件文档与工程通识核对，未抄原文
- Audio delivery requirements for game engines, checked against middleware documentation and general practice, not copied
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.