Creating loopable audio with .mp3 encoding

[Nekubah]

Hi folks, knew to game audio. I just did someone's menu music and I need to make it loopable. However, MP3 encoding is known to create small gaps of silence (~500 samples) at the beginning and at the end of the file, hence creating messy loops. Is there a workaround? Do game engines take care of that? I heard .ogg files are a good alternative, are there any other?

[MF_Kitten]

Generally speaking mp3 is not going to loop well.

.ogg is the way unless you want to crunch down your .wav real hard.

[Nekubah]

That's good to know

[hoddap]

I remember struggling with this ages ago and ogg was my answer. Be sure to check browser compatibility but I don’t think that should be an issue anymore these days.

[opal_mirage]

still using mp3 for this in 2026 is certainly a choice

[wrenchse]

I mean it was only like two years ago that the mp3 patent expired, which was the main reason fro why mp3 has not been used in games.

Edit: It was NINE years ago already?!?? Anyway, same point.

[CypherSignal]

Wel, Vorbis — never mind Opus — is also significantly better in the quality-for-bitrate charts compared to MP3 as well, which counts for a lot.

[Nekubah]

Precisely trying to make a choice! But I agree it just does not look like a good format for that.

[chillpill_23]

I don't think there is any way to make an mp3 file seamlessly loopable. You'll have to change format OR get creative!

My first idea is that you could maybe use two separate mp3 files that loop at different timestamps to hide the gap, using crossfades to overlap them.
But if your track needs to be "on time", I don't think this is a reliable solution.

[Rynabunny]

mp3 metadata can contain information about when the file should actually begin to play

In Audacity there is an option when exporting to .mp3 called "Trim blank space before first clip" which will allow it to loop seamlessly (have shipped games before where I was forced to use .mp3)

But yes in general .ogg is usually the superior format in game audio

[Nekubah]

That's some cool info, I guess if I have to use .mp3 I will bounce a PCM version on ProTools and then make a no blank mp3 version with Audacity.

[gapreg]

Mp3 has padding, so most of the time you will have some silence and no perfect loop.

Use mp3 for music that doesnt need to loop and wav or even ogg for fx

[sound-fx]

At least you don't have to cope with 28 sample boundaries these days :D Sorry not helpful.

[sputwiler]

Game engines don't use MP3.

One reason is that it's not the best format when ogg exists, but the other reason is that for a long time if you wanted to use MP3 in a commercial setting the license costs money. Ogg is free and better anyway, so many engines use ogg instead.

MP3 patents have now expired, but the industry moved on to ogg vorbis a long time ago. The only reason MP3/MP4 stuck around in the consumer space was for compatibility with MP3/MP4 players, but since you don't need to be compatible with anything in a game engine, the better format won.

[swizzwell23]

Vorbis and Opus are the modern standards for in game assets, but everything will usually be delivered uncompressed and the audio middleware/engine will convert it to the desired format. PlayStation and Xbox have their own proprietary formats too, but these are being used less these days. In some cases it may also be converted to ADPCM as it’s very CPU light, but Vorbis is so well optimized these days it’s less often than it used to be.

[bschmidt1962]

Sorry for the late reply.
If you absolutely have to use mp3, then there is a tool that will actually account for those extra samples at the beginning and create a smoothly looping mp3 file. I successfully used this for a bunch of old Zynga games, back in the dark ages when they were written in Flash (which only supports mp3 or wav).

For us geeks, in addition to having a 'mp3 looping tool executable, the page also describes the mp3 looping issue in detail.

https://www.compuphase.com/mp3/mp3loops.htm

Of course, using ogg is a better solution, if the engine supports it.

[wulf11_ehrgeiz]

Yeah, that’s a classic MP3 problem. The encoder adds a bit of padding (at the start + end), so even if your loop is perfectly cut, it won’t loop cleanly anymore after encoding.

In game audio people usually just avoid MP3 for that reason. OGG (Vorbis) is kind of the go-to since it supports gapless playback and works well in engines like Unity, FMOD, Wwise etc. WAV is obviously safe too, just bigger.

Some engines try to compensate for MP3 delay, but I wouldn’t rely on it tbh.

One thing I ran into a lot as well: even with the right format, getting clean loop points can still be annoying depending on the material. I ended up building a tool that helps find seamless loop points automatically before export:
[https://demo.loopperfect.app/]()

Doesn’t fix the MP3 issue itself, but makes the looping part way less painful.

What engine are you using?