Audio in RichCast

Audio, music, and sound effects are key to creating

an immersive experience.

Recording Voices

Audio can be assigned to the RichCast Speak tile, meaning you can record or source your own voice clips and use these to bring a character to life.
If you are recording your own voice (or someone else's), try to do so in a quiet environment away from street/background noise or anything else that might get picked up. When your voice clip is played, any background sounds can be distracting and pop out.

Trim Your Audio Clips & Add Fades

When editing voice clips, make sure you trim them at the start and beginning of the clip and add a very short fade. This stops any sudden or unnatural sounding start/end points.

Avoid Long Effects

A little bit of reverb can sound great on a voice clip (especially if the setting is somewhere like a cave or a large room), but remember that the Speak tile won’t progress until the audio has finished playing, so if you have a particularly long reverb or delay effect then it can make the pace feel sluggish as RichCast waits until the clip has reached the end.

Balance Your Audio Recordings

Try to make sure your voice recordings are all roughly the same volume. If you are using a DAW or recording software a great spot to aim for is -6 to -9dBFS.

Check Your File Names Before Importing

If your audio file is named correctly (as per the script) then it will auto assign to the correct Speak tile when imported into RichCast. It’s worth checking your files are correct before importing to avoid any errors. It’s unlikely that there will be any major problems if you are copying and pasting from your script to name your files, but some software can change an apostrophe to an underscore when exporting, so keep an eye out for any strange characters that might prevent them from auto assigning.

Unassigned Voice Files

It’s not uncommon to find a file hasn’t assigned properly, usually down to a filename issue. If you have found a Speak tile without a voice clip assigned check your file names and see if any have been given duplicate names in error as this can sometimes happen, particularly with longer scripts.

Looping Audio

You can easily loop ambiences using the loop function in the audio tile (e.g. the sound of a city, a rainy day, a windy mountain etc.). It can be tempting to use a long file but this might slow RichCast down when streaming so opt for a shorter file that can be looped seamlessly. If you are finding there is an obvious volume change, click or pop sound when the file loops try adding reverb as an effect via the audio tile as this will help disguise the loop point.
Another trick is to cut the end of the ambiance track in your editing software and then move a section of it to the start of the clip, applying a fade between the two. This means when the audio track reaches the end and jumps back to the beginning to loop, it will be seamless. This will also help avoid any unnatural fade in/out sounds:

Use Distortion For Louder Sounds

If you find your audio file is too quiet, sometimes adding distortion as an effect is a great way of boosting the volume and making the sound more impactful. This will depend on the type of clip however.

Use Pitch Shift To Vary Your Sounds

If you are using a sound repeatedly in your story, then altering the pitch of it in different places can make the sound appear different. For example, if you have 5 instances where you are playing the sound of footsteps, rather than find 5 different audio samples you can use the same clip but with different pitches. This is often enough to sound like a different clip to the player. Pitching up will also give the effect of being faster and pitching down will give the effect of being slower.

Keep Your Channels Organised

It can get confusing as to what is playing on each audio channel. Obviously keep your ambiance on your ambiance tracks and music on the music tracks but a useful tip is to put ‘one shot’ audio files (for example a door knock, a gunshot, a scream, a car engine) onto SFX1 or SFX2 so you know that at any point, if you use those channels again it won’t stop a looping sound being played.

Use The Low Pass Filter To Make Things Sound Far Away

The low pass filter is great if you want something to sound distant as naturally we don’t hear higher frequencies the further something is away from us. This can work really well in combination with a lower volume.

Use MP3s Over WAVs

Whilst WAV files tend to offer better quality, their file size is much larger than an MP3. This can cause potential lagging issues when streaming a title on mobile data. Using MP3 files (or converting files from WAV to MP3) can rectify this.

Mono Vs Stereo

Where possible use mono audio as the file size will be smaller than that of stereo. However there will be cases where stereo is preferred due to panning effects.