common practice for padding short audio clips with silence?

What is the common practice of how much silence padding you should add for 1-3 second audio clips? Or can I safely strip all silence from the beginning and end with no issue?

 

You dont add padding, you do the "padding" as you mix the audio. You can use the unity AudioMixer in conjunction with snapshots to make blends smooth, or configure a lead in time etc https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AudioMixer.html

 

Are you trying to add or remove it? "Safely strip all silence" implies you want to remove it. Or are you trying to remove as much as possible?

If the latter, you can get rid of it all, unless you want it there for some reason.

 

I always remove all silence. When I play the sound from the domain I want it right away.

 

Why would you want silence added to your audio clips? I don't understand the use case.

 

For example sounds triggered by domain events like a weapon being discharged. I can't think of the opposite when you want silence at the start of a clip.

Edit: haha we are on the same page

 

The only thing you need to watch out for when trimming silence from the beginning is that you want your audio waveform to start at zero crossing. Otherwise you might get an audible "pop" when the sound starts. Some audio editors have an automatic fix for this, but another way to fix it is to just add a few milliseconds of fade-in at the beginning.

 

I had some sounds that did pop with Phonon 3D, but are working in Project Accustics so I think its also up to the spatiliser