Audio Gameboy-generated sound file playing a different sound

Zahk

Member
So I'm at the point where I'm trying to create sound effects for my game, and I found this very neat tool to generate sound effects through a gameboy emulator. I recorded a sound effect through audacity, chopped it up, gave it a nice fade-in/fade-out, then imported it into Gamemaker.

Then... this happened. Each time a menu item is cycled through, it's supposed to play the sound effect. But the first time it's played, you can barely even hear it. The second time, it has this weird bass to it. After that it plays fine. So, I discovered that when playing these sound effects for the first time after a brief period of silence, it almost totally cuts out the sound. But when playing them in quick succession, they play like they should (although about twice as loud as they should be). This means that some sound effects that I can't play in quick succession, like one that plays when talking to an NPC, don't play at all. This is particularly frustrating because it makes it impossible for me to test the sound to see if it fits... because it won't play.

Anyone know what's going on here? Or, much more importantly, how to fix this?

Update: it plays normally in an executable, it's just playing wrong when I run it through GM, which is mildly reassuring, but mostly frustrating because it makes sound testing pretty much impossible. Am I really going to have to create an exe every time I want to test my game's sound?

Update 2: Other sound effects play just fine. I presume the issue has something to do with the nature of these gameboy-generated sound effects, but I still don't know how to circumvent the issue. These kinds of sound effects are crucial to the kind of game I'm making... is there another way I could record them to make them play correctly, other than through my PC's line-in in Audacity?
 
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Kelly G

Member
To me it just sounds like a "pop" at the beginning of the sound. This usually happens when an audio file contains a wave form that either has a DC offset or sometimes it's just the beginning that's off-zero.

Open the file in a audio editor like Audacity and see if the wave is off center. In that case, edit it like in the article I linked above. Otherwise, Zoom in at the very beginning of the waveform (It should look like a jaggy line). The wave needs to start exactly at the center line. If it starts above or below, then it will cause your speaker to jump, which can cause glitchy pops and drop-outs.

It's been a long time since I've worked with raw audio but these tips may help, if you can identify the problem.
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorial_click_and_pop_removal_techniques.html
 
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