Optimising audio at low sample rates?

[Agent47]

Here's the deal:

I'm doing the sound fx and maybe some music/atmos for a 3D online game my friend is coding. Because it's downloadable, the game's file size will have to be small (a few megs). He's allowed me 1-2Mb of space maximum for sfx and music!

I've decided I'll keep my maximum limit to 1Mb, and have worked out doing things at 16Bit 22.5kHz mono (wav) will buy me 25 seconds of time. Although I'm tempted to work at 11kHz to gain 50 seconds of space...

Anyway, I wondered if anyone has any tips for optimising sound at low sample rates? 11k sounds pretty poor and just about passable, but does anyone know of any frequencies at rates of 11k or 22k that should be boosted/cut to make the sound more palatable? Any resampling tips?

Any tips from people who've worked at these low rates would be appreciated.

And no, unfortunately the game software doesn't support mp3s!

 

[BlackDog]

the only possible option i can think of is asking your friend to include a decoder in the game. also mp3 is not the best compression method i believe. you can work with your friend to findout which compression method is the best and if there are encode/decode functions implemented for the particular language he is writing the game in. this way you might get even better quality audio than 22 khz wav and take much less space.


-shami