Audio Music sounds more flat or hollow in Unity

I have some music tracks which I've imported into Unity. When I listen to the tracks in the inspector (or in game), they just sound a bit different than if I open the same file via other music playing software. It doesn't matter if it's a wav, mp3, or ogg. I've tried every possible import setting on the files, but they don't seem to help.

Should there be any good reason that Unity plays audio files differently/worse than most every other piece of software? Are there some settings to adjust overall, aside from adjusting settings in the sound mixer?

 

I would go back to basics and check everything such as:

• Check there are no effects applied or volume reductions in and of the mixers or parent mixers to the audiosource
• Check it's not enabled for 3D spatial sound
• Check it's not going through any reverbs or reverb zones

If all that doesn't turn up anything I would start a completely blank project and put a single audiosource in it playing and test that. I haven't noticed the same problem that you mention in my projects and I do loudness profiling on them so a problem like this would be obvious!

 

Checked all that, and brought the clip into a brand new Unity project. And again, this occurs even when previewing the clip in the Unity inspector, which means any kind of audio effects would not be enabled at that point. It's hard to describe exactly what's different about playing the clip in Unity, but on the whole it feels like the bass notes are more muddy (the bass sounds more like noise than specific tones), and the higher notes sound more muted and less sharp.

 

I would say you should profile the recording in audio software (I use Cubase, but Adobe Audition, Audacity, anything) and run a spectrum analyser on it.

It could be that your media player is applying EQ to your audio too as another possible cause for the difference?

At this point I would take the audio file into Adobe Audition or Cubase and then record the system audio coming out of Unity into a different track and compare them side-by-side.

Depending on your setup some audio softwares can easily record system audio but if you can't get it to work, or you use an ASIO sound card or interface then you should grab this software to make 'internal routings' of the audio so it can be recorded (that's how I do it).

https://www.vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/banana.htm

Feel free to also send me the audio file and I'll be happy to check it out on my system too.

 

Do you have any effects, or audio filters in your project?
eg. compressors or low pass effect filters or other etc.

Like these:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-AudioLowPassEffect.html

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-AudioCompressor.html

If so, it could be that the muddyness is being caused, by some of the
effects property dials/options, being turned up too much, or turned down
too much. Causing, over filtering and over compressing, of the sound samples.
Which in turn, can cause the sound or sample, to sound dull and dumbed down.

 

No, I started a new project to be sure as well, and this is occurring in a brand new project with nothing in it other than the audio file I imported. And it's happening in both Play mode and in the Inspector when previewing an audio file. (I don't think that mixer settings apply to previewing an audio file in the inspector, but even so, I don't have any mixer settings in the new project anyway.)

 

I think the mixer settings do apply in editor ... At least if you have an audiolistener in the scene anyways.

You should try the profiling route that I suggested as it's the only way to know for sure.

Also check your unity audio settings to see if anything looks strange (sample rate, etc).

Also... Try comparing with another audio player like foobar or something.