Blender Speakers

Blender has a speaker object, which is quite obscure to most. It can be useful for music animations, adding sound when you preview your animation.

Usage is quite self explanatory: Add the speaker, select an audio file, and it will play the audio along with your animation.

However, there are a few things to note:

• Start frame: The frame at which you add the speaker object (not select the audio file) is the frame when the audio will start.

• Sound effects: Blender will calculate pitch shifts from the doppler effect, volume based on distance, and panning. This is all relative to your active camera.

  • I usually set “Volume Min/Max” both to 1 in the properties to avoid this, as it’s quite annoying.

  • I usually parent the speaker to the camera to avoid the doppler effect and panning.

• Final audio: If you render the animation to a video file, the audio will be included (along with the above mentioned effects). However, I usually process the final audio separately, and then combine them in a video editor.

• Playback sync: Find this option in Timeline > Playback > Sync. The default (“Play Every Frame”) will lag if your computer is slow. I usually set it to “Sync to Audio” to avoid this.