From Test-Scratch-Wiki
(Redirected from Eng:Sounds)
- This eng is about sounds in the Scratch Program. For blocks related to sounds, see Sound Blocks.
 Warning: | Loud sounds (such as screams and certain genres of music) can hurt the viewer's ears or even cause deafness; especially if the volume is set too high or the user is using head/earphones. When using such sounds, it's always wise to add a warning in the Notes and Credits or lower the volume of the audio if possible. |
A sound is an item which one hears that can be played in a Scratch project, available by importing, Scratch's built-in sound library, or recording. Sounds are played by using the sound blocks, which control a sound's volume, tempo, and more. All sounds in Scratch are played in mono.
Sounds and notes
All sounds played in a project are divided into two types: sounds and notes.
Sounds
Sounds are the items that are available only by importing or recording. These can be obtained in the "Sounds" tab, in which one can import, record, play, and edit sounds.
The following blocks control the playing of these sounds:
— Begins the sound and executes the rest of its script, without waiting for the sound to finish playing.
— Plays a sound, waits for it to finish playing, and will carry on with its script.
— Cancels all sounds currently playing.
— Sets a sprite's volume.
— Changes a sprite's volume by a given amount.
Notes
- Main article: Notes
Prior to Scratch 2.0, notes were accessed by a MIDI system, which are varieties of notes built in to one's computer. However, since Scratch 2.0 runs on Adobe Flash, the MIDI sound library is uncapable of use, and therefore the Scratch Team had to create their own sounds library built in to the Scratch program. The following blocks are related to notes:
— Plays the specified drum for a given amount of beats.
— Plays a given note from an instrument chosen in other blocks.
— Sets the current instrument to one selected from a drop-down menu.
— Sets a sprite's volume.
— Changes a sprite's volume by a given amount.
— Sets a sprite's tempo (affects the "beat" speed).
— Changes a sprite's tempo a given amount.
— Plays a rest for a given amount of beats.
Accessibility of Sounds
Importing
To obtain these, one has to view the Sounds tab of a sprite/stage and select the Import button (which appears as a folder). The user will be able to import sounds from their desktop or varying locations, including a sound library that comes with Scratch.
 Note: | When a surround sound audio file is converted to mono, the surround channels are removed. This is due to Scratch's limitations with sound. |
Recording
- Main article: Sound Editor
Sounds can be recorded, imported, edited, exported and modified in the Scratch 2.0 sound editor. It provides simple options to edit an existing sound for many benefits. For more advanced options not within Scratch's, an external sound editor can be used, but it is not recommended to record music from other websites because this will result in low-quality music with tons of background noise and quietness. The best way to do it is to import music.
Note: When recording sound, it may be helpful to turn the volume up a little bit in the Sound Editor before recording. Turning up the volume will make it easier for Scratchers to hear the sound recorded when a project is launched.
Uploading MP3 Bug
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With an update to Scratch 2.0, there was also a glitch that imported MP3 files would be blank. Someone, however, learned that you can use Audacity to convert these files to WAVs. However, if you do not have this program like many Scratchers, you can try converting the MP3 file to a WAV online.
After a fix was put upon this, another glitch occurred in which imported MP3 files are renamed "instance####".[1] This was fixed on January 20, 2015.[2]
Synchronizing Sounds and Actions
There is a slight delay the first time the Scratch player plays a sound. This delay will not be evident while working on the project, only when the page is reloaded entirely. The effect of this is that if one message triggers two scripts, one playing a sound and one animation, the animation script will start running before the sound starts. A very short pause using a Wait Block before the animating script will prevent this.
Sound Quality Issue
Upon the Scratch 2.0 update also came an issue many Scratchers experience when using the sound block to play music. To conserve space on the Scratch servers and prevent any copyright issues, the process of uploading requires that the sound be compressed to a worse quality format.
