Audio Source
The Audio Source plays back an Audio Clip in the scene. If the Audio Clip is a 3D clip, the source is played back at a given position and will attenuate over distance. The audio can be spread out between speakers (stereo to 7.1) (Spread) and morphed between 3D and 2D (PanLevel). This can be controlled over distance with falloff curves. Also, if the listener is within 1 or multiple Reverb Zones, reverberations is applied to the source. (PRO only) Individual filters can be applied to each audio source for an even richer audio experience. See Audio Effects for more details.
The Audio Source gizmo in the Scene View and its settings in the inspector.
Properties
| Audio Clip | Reference to the sound clip file that will be played. |
| Mute | If enabled the sound will be playing but muted. |
| Bypass Effects | This Is to quickly "by-pass" filter effects applied to the audio source. An easy way to turn all effects on/off. |
| Play On Awake | If enabled, the sound will start playing the moment the scene launches. If disabled, you need to start it using the Play() command from scripting. |
| Loop | Enable this to make the Audio Clip loop when it reaches the end. |
| Priority | Determines the priority of this audio source among all the ones that coexist in the scene. (Priority: 0 = most important. 256 = least important. Default = 128.). Use 0 for music tracks to avoid it getting occasionally swapped out. |
| Volume | How loud the sound is at a distance of 1 world unit (1 meter) from the Audio Listener. |
| Pitch | Amount of change in pitch due to slowdown/speed up of the Audio Clip. Value 1 is normal playback speed. |
| 3D Sound Settings | Settings that are applied to the audio source if the Audio Clip is a 3D Sound. |
| Pan Level | Sets how much the 3d engine has an effect on the audio source. |
| Spread | Sets the spread angle to 3d stereo or multichannel sound in speaker space. |
| Doppler Level | Determines how much doppler effect will be applied to this audio source (if is set to 0, then no effect is applied). |
| Min Distance | Within the MinDistance, the sound will stay at loudest possible. Outside MinDistance it will begin to attenuate. Increase the MinDistance of a sound to make it 'louder' in a 3d world, and decrease it to make it 'quieter' in a 3d world. |
| Max Distance | The distance where the sound stops attenuating at. Beyond this point it will stay at the volume it would be at MaxDistance units from the listener and will not attenuate any more. |
| Rolloff Mode | How fast the sound fades. The higher the value, the closer the Listener has to be before hearing the sound.(This is determined by a Graph). |
| Logarithmic Rolloff | The sound is loud when you are close to the audio source, but when you get away from the object it decreases significantly fast. |
| Linear Rolloff | The more far away from the audio source you go, the less you can hear it. |
| Custom Rolloff | The sound from the audio source behaves accordingly to how you set the graph of roll offs. |
| 2D Sound Settings | Settings that are applied to the audio source if the Audio clip is a 2D Sound. |
| Pan 2D | Sets how much the engine has an effect on the audio source. |
Types of Rolloff
There are three Rolloff modes: Logarithmic, Linear and Custom Rolloff. The Custom Rolloff can be modified by modifying the volume distance curve as described below. If you try to modify the volume distance function when it is set to Logarithmic or Linear, the type will automatically change to Custom Rolloff.
Rolloff Modes that an audio source can have.
Distance Functions
There are several properties of the audio that can be modified as a function of the distance between the audio source and the audio listener.
Volume: Amplitude(0.0 - 1.0) over distance.
Pan: Left(-1.0) to Right(1.0) over distance.
Spread: Angle (degrees 0.0 - 360.0) over distance.
Low-Pass (only if LowPassFilter is attached to the AudioSource): Cutoff Frequency (22000.0-10.0) over distance.
Distance functions for Volume, Pan, Spread and Low-Pass audio filter. The current distance to the Audio Listener is marked in the graph.
To modify the distance functions, you can edit the curves directly. For more information, see the guide to Editing Curves.
Creating Audio Sources
Audio Sources don't do anything without an assigned Audio Clip. The Clip is the actual sound file that will be played back. The Source is like a controller for starting and stopping playback of that clip, and modifying other audio properties.
To create a new Audio Source:
- Import your audio files into your Unity Project. These are now Audio Clips.
- Go to from the menubar.
- With the new GameObject selected, select .
- Assign the Audio Clip property of the Audio Source Component in the Inspector.
Note: If you want to create an audio source just for one Audio Clip that you have in the Assets folder, you can drag and drop that Audio Clip to the scene view and an Audio Source game object will be created automatically for it.
Platform specific details
iOS
On mobile platforms compressed audio is encoded as MP3 for speedier decompression. Beware that this compression can remove samples at the end of the clip and potentially break a "perfect-looping" clip. Make sure the clip is right on a specific MP3 sample boundary to avoid sample clipping (Tools to perform this is widely available). For performance reasons audio clips can be played back using the Apple hardware codec. To enable this check the "Use Hardware" checkbox in the import settings. See the Audio Clip documentation for more details.
Android
On mobile platforms compressed audio is encoded as MP3 for speedier decompression. Beware that this compression can remove samples at the end of the clip and potentially break a "perfect-looping" clip. Make sure the clip is right on a specific MP3 sample boundary to avoid sample clipping (Tools to perform this is widely available).