Collaborating with a musician and sound designer who is familiar with FMOD will make your audio sound more professional to your audience with the benefit of being easier to implement. Here are a few advantages of shifting your audio out of the design platform of Unity 3D or Unreal Engine into FMOD.
- create more dynamic audio that can be varied slightly every time the player enters the game. For example, building a subtle complexity into footsteps or slightly altering the music mix parameters can avoid monotony in your audio.
- create greater variety in your SFX, ambience and music to add interest for the player and avoid aural fatigue with repetitive sounds.
- create audio that is responsive to the player actions without being a distraction from the game. For example, subtle proximity effects add to the realism to player movements around an environment.
- create audio that responds to different game contexts to add more realism. For example, indoors, outdoors, caves, rooms, theatres, and warehouses in various weather conditions.
- use the stereo field to full effect to enhance 3D environments and immerse the player in each context.
- use the stereo field to provide subtle directional guides to the player. For example, place audio cues for player targets to help them orient accurately to the direction they need to travel. This will minimise unnecessary visual cues that can run the risk of taking the player out of their enraptured state.
- be more subtle and nuanced with your sound design due to the greater control offered by FMOD.
- utilise less assets more creatively to provide variety without the need huge audio file libraries.
- Finding a musician and sound designer who is familiar with FMOD for easy integration of their assets into your project. This makes FMOD a great collaboration tool.
- Easily edit audio effects anytime because these effects are not baked into your audio assets. This means that final tweaks can always be made throughout the duration of the project.
- It saves you money. Working with a musician and sound designer who is familiar with FMOD provides access to both original and library sounds so you don’t have to worry about purchasing huge sound libraries for your projects.
- Create a more professional soundscape. Due to the fine audio control available in FMOD, your sound designer can make the necessary adjustments to avoid glitches and sound anomalies such as phasing, uncomfortable overlaps, pops or poor looping.
There is much more to discuss here but I hope these few points make it clear that working with a musician and sound designer familiar with FMOD will make your audio more professional while being easy to implement.