New sounds are welcomed, both to add different sounds or to replace the existing ones to improve them.
Before adding them, the soundclips must pass a criterion:
- Appropriate license: their licenses must let us use the clip. Those are licenses such as
CC BY (SA)andCC0. If the sound is yours, there's no problem; we will always inform the authorship. - Technical criterion: explained below. You can measure and fit the sounds by yourself or let us do it for you; open an issue for this.
- Ogg Vorbis format
As explained in #20, there are some psychoacoustic parameters that all sounds should fit in to be comfortable as ambient sounds. Here is a table with the orientative values:
| Criteria | LUFS (Int.) | Range | True Peak (dBTP) | Max LUFS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | -35 | 5-7 | -30 | -30 |
| Ideal | -27 | 7-🔝 | -7,5 | -25 |
| Maximum | -23 | 🔝 | -6 | -18 |
The parameters ordered according to their priority:
- Range
- LUFS Integrated
- Maximum LUFS
- True Peak
To measure the sound levels, all faders (sound-level bars) must be to the 100%. The most times this will be the loudest, unless it is indicated with percentage or with a mark of 0 dB.
0 dB = 100%
After setting app the faders, the sound source must be connected to an analyzer:
- I use x42 Meter Collection, open source, allongside Carla.
- Another good method to measure is using Ardour and its Loudness Analysis.
- The Range can not be changed upwards. If your clip does not fit in the Technical Criterion, you can send the clip to [email protected] explaining the situation, only if the range is bigger than 3,5.
- LUFS Int. and Max. LUFS can be modified changing the clip's gain (volume). The change on dBs is approximated to LUFS, so fit and analyze until you have it 😄
- True Peak tends to be some very-short-in-time transients, peaks. For fitting those peaks to about at least -6 dBs, use a limiter with the threshold a bit more than -6 and short release times (<5 ms).
The soundclips are all under data/resources/sounds directory with .ogg file extension, Ogg Vorbis encoding format.
If your sounds passed the criterion, you can add the sounds in your cloned local repo, at the specified directory, and the Pull Request to the main repository. Open an issue if you don't know how to do this.
Sounds must have a hair-style symbolic icon.
If you don't have an icon and your sound has been approved, you can wait for someone in the community to contribute one. But no sound will be included in the app without a proper icon.
More documentation here: Sounds_documentation.md