I''m just about finished with my game that I''m developing and I just need to finish up on creating the graphics, music, and sound effects. Graphics file formats I can handle, but I must plead ignorance on sound and music file formats. Currently I have sound effects in uncompressed WAV files and music in General MIDI files. The sound effects are fine, but the General MIDI makes my game sound like its for the Comadore 64. I tried encoding them in WAV files, but a minute long segment is about 3-5MB. I''m planning on having about 20 different music loops about 1-2 minutes in length and another longer track for the Intro. I''m also using Direct Sound and loading all the files with IDirectMusicLoader8::LoadObjectFromFile(). I''m not sure what file types and compression are supported with this function. Microsoft seems to have left that out of their documentation. In case my question isn''t clear it is simply: What is the best sound format for music as far as quality and file size and can I still use LoadObjectFromFile() to load it? Thanks in advance.

http://www.sidstation.com/ - i beg to differ on the c64
Why not use a 192kbps .ogg? (not sure how well they loop tho)

Ogg works great. Most engines support it now and it doesn''t have any looping issues in the experience I''ve had with it. It also sounds better and compresses smaller than MP3; plus it''s lisence free so anyone can use it!

Hope this helps your decision!

-Scott

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scott b. morton
game music composer/geek
www.scottbmorton.com
member of G.A.N.G. (Game Audio Network Guild)