I cannot make sound effects and music myself so I went sample hunting. While the game has audio it sounds terrible. It’s flat and the volume is just off. I tried to tweak the volume of samples by hand but it is tedious and still sounding bad. I have three audio busses for SFX, Music and Master volume, is that enough?
First idea was to just normalize all sounds but it is more about the perceived loudness. What can I do?
Should samples be mono or stereo?
Can I create AudioStreamPlayer as I wish?
I have a similar problem, I actually dont really touch the buses for my game much, I would say that for music, it should be stereo, for sound effects, i would use mono. (usually)
Also, you should look into Audacity for sound editing,
I use it for fixing my songs and turning to .wav format, from there you can pan the audio as needed and adjust the quality, etc.
For positional sounds (2D/3D) I would always use mono. For any other (like background music) stereo.
I found this tutorial to get some basic effects on the busses.
Especially the Compressor helped to get better audio. I think some samples are just not good or fitting to their event.
I will hunt for more samples and will try spatial audio next.
What kind of terrible are we talking? If the samples sound bad on their own, then obviously that’s the problem. The volume you’ll want to control in code, by factors like distance, or whether there is something in the way between player and sound source (in a 3D world), etc. The flatness you mention might be a lack of reverb - reverb gives the sense of sounds reverberating in a room or other space, and also gives a sense of distance (no reverb = close, much reverb = far). The type of reverb also communicates a lot about a space, the human ear can instantly tell if one is in a small or large space, hard or soft walls, and more.
If your sounds are distorting, then the (combined) volume has reached the max. Limiting and compression help with this, but it’s a better solution to set levels properly and potentially compress the bus if there is too much discrepancy between the softest and loudest sounds - that’s what compression is, it compresses louder peaks down and raises lower volume areas in volume.
If the sounds are muddy or harsh, you might consider using a filter - lowpass cuts high frequencies (which can be harsh or fatiguing to the ear), highpass cuts low frequencies (like bassy rumble or the low noise you typically get on a field recording). You can do this dynamically in Godot, or process the samples as needed. Lowpassing also gives the sense that sound is coming from within a closed space (like music inside a club you’re outside of).
Hope that helps.. I’ve spent a lot more time in music and sound than I have in game development, so please let me know if you have questions 
And maybe post some samples / the in-game sound!
High frequency jitter was a problem
The compressor is a required affect IMO.
Also after hearing the samples over and over I came to the conclusion I picked bad sounds. Too long or bas timing.
I downloaded the Soniss sample pack to get a feel how professional sounds sound like.
Sharing the sounds, preferably in context in-game, would be best, if you’re still unsatisfied and want more specific help. Otherwise, I’ll assume your problem is solved for now
I am still working on it. I trying new sample, pre processing loudness, converting to mono. I will get back here with results once I am done. Good audio is hard.
Yes, especially in a game engine. It’s well worth being familiar with too, so you’re definitely not wasting your time getting better at audio
Just share whenever you like, it’s difficult talking about sound without a reference.
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