Sound Tutorial (New)|PS3 Themes|Forum|PS3 Themes

My first Sound Tutorial would never load when I tried to edit it, and I'd constantly get 500 Internal Server Errors, so I decided to start again...Hopefully without the problems.

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Sound tutorial

I noticed there are some problems regarding sounds every now and then…hopefully this will help!

Things you need:

Audacity ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ )
MFAudio ( http://www.zophar.net/utilitie.....o-1-1.html )
Theme Builder

( http://www.lili-chan.com/download )http://www.lili-chan.com/downloads.htm)

I would recommend getting it from here on PS3 Themes, because lili-chan does not have 4.0 Beta available.

First you need to find some audio files. Just do a search for "Free Sound effects", or "Sound FX" or something to that effect.

Keep in mind the sounds need to be SHORT. There's nothing more annoying than a theme with a cursor sound that lasts FOREVER. ALSO, there's a size limit to sounds in Themes, and if you go over that limit, your Theme will fail when you compile it. Try to keep your basic Navigation sounds down to under half a second, and the OK sound to about under or over one second. All together, you have about 150kb to play with, so when you split that up into 5 different sounds, you have about 30kb per sound. Making them any longer or larger runs a risk of making your theme not able to compile.

After you've acquired the sounds you'd like, you're going to need to convert them to Sony's proprietary sound format, because there isn't a huge demand for .VAG files right now.
That's where Audacity comes in. Open the file in Audacity and you'll be presented with your sound in a sound wave format. This is a good time to edit your sounds to remove excess silence/noises if you wish. You can also pull what you want from a sound and ditch the rest.

Now, when I make sounds, before I'm through, I usually run them through the Amplify Effect and set it to "-10", that way the sounds aren't overly loud and aggressive when you're using them. (The Sonic The Hedgehog 4 Episode One theme you can download from the PlayStation Store for free is a perfect example of a theme with sounds that are too loud.)

When you're done, save it in WAV Format, and make sure it's set to a frequency of 44100!

Make sure your sound is at 16bit and at Mono for better results as well. It helps lower your file size when converting to .VAG.

You can make sure it's in 44100 in the lower left corner of Audacity. To save in WAV Format, Go to FILE -> Export as WAV.

Now sometimes, after saving to WAV, it'll add a few seconds to the end of your sound. It's annoying, but IF it happens, open it up in Audacity again and remove the excess, remembering to save in 44100/16bit-Mono again. That should fix it for good.

Now that you have your WAV ready, we need to convert it to .VAG format. That's where MFAudio comes in.

Open your sound in MFAudio. You'll see the program has everything split into 2 separate sections, your sound above, and conversion options underneath. Underneath will be a drop-down menu where you can select what sound format you'd like to convert it into. Choose VAG, which I believe is the 4th option, then click the save as and choose a destination on your computer. Even though you've done that, it's not saved yet! You still need to click "Process!", which is located in the bottom right of the application window. A tiny window will pop up that says, "Conversion complete!"

Now you have your .VAG file that's ready to use in your PS3 Theme. That's where the Theme Builder comes in. The fourth tab over is named "Additional Commands". That's where you add sounds. Choose your sound for the appropriate Theme function, (Cursor, Cancel, OK, Question or Decide).

Compile your theme and it should be included!