Audio Optimization - MIDI or WAV?

[DJ_irl (Avery)]

I am working on a game and I've hit the memory limit a few times in development.

I'm wondering for songs/sounds that range from like 1-5 minutes - what is the optimal audio format respecting memory and CPU?

I currently render songs live with the synths in-game. I am wanting to add long noisy sound effects for like rain or wind. Would it be easier on the CPU and RAM for me to pre-render audio and use the fileplayer versus synthesizing it in-game using midi files?

I plan to use the playdate synths to generate all the game's audio, it's just a matter of what's easier on the device's components - MIDI versus WAV

[Daeke (Raphaël Calabro)]

Uncompressed WAV are easy on the CPU but WAV also takes a lot of RAM compared to MIDI. So if you already hit the memory limit, I recommend using MIDI instead of WAV.

@Nino did a comparison of the CPU usage between WAV and hardware synth and his conclusion was:

ADPCM is indeed the cpu-friendliest way of playing music

Gravity Express

Errata: Music cpu demands Earlier, I wrote a long post about how mp3 would only use 3% of cpu power. Well, I was wrong and it's high time to correct the misinformation. You see, when you have your playdate connected to your computer and press cmd+D in the simulator, you get a device info dialog like this: [Screenshot 2022-12-23 at 12.22.37] In the example above, an MP3 song is playing. Note how the audio part of the chart shows 2.4% cpu usage. Let's compare that to a screenshot from the s…

[DJ_irl (Avery)]

I appreciate the info, thank you very much @Daeke @Nino