I found this useful audio tip out completely by mistake but now I use it all the time as it is really handy.

Did you know when you import audio files into unreal you can use an existing audio files settings as a template?

If you would prefer to watch the video version: check it out here

Normally when you bring an audio file (.wav) into the editor all its settings are defaulted out or nulled. There are a bunch of settings which are good practice to have set up as early as possible, in particular, the Sound Group, Sound Class, Attenuation and Concurrency settings as you can see below.

It can be a pain if we are importing a lot of sounds into the engine to have to keep setting these up. However, there are ways multiple ways we can help speed this process up. Firstly you could use the Property Matrix to batch fill assets in as shown below. This can still be quite a long process as you have to manually go through a bunch of different fields, even if you are doing it in batches.

Another method would be to have some custom defaults set up in your project. This can be done by going to Projects Settings then finding the Audio category. Here we can set default Sound Class, Concurrency amongst other things. This is a useful technique but I find it is more for generically catching stuff, not to mention the fact that you cannot set a default attenuation.

The best way I have found is to use the templating method. For this, you need to select a sound already in engine that has similar settings to what you will want on your newly imported sounds. For example, if you are bringing in a gun shooting sound, have a gun shooting sound selected in engine. In our case below, we are importing some new lootable sounds so I have selected a lootable sound that we currently have set up in engine.

If you then drag some sound files (.wav) into the editor content browser as if you were importing them, you will get a popup that basically asks you if you want to use the currently selected sound as a template.

If you hit Yes then your sounds will be imported and if you open them up you will see that they have exactly the same settings as your sound you had selected.

I now use this all the time when importing sounds. Even if the desired sound settings do not match exactly what I will want, I will generally copy from something similar then use the Property Matrix to batch change a minimal amount of settings to what I want. If you combine this template method with having some audio defaults in your project’s settings, you are making your life a hell of a lot easier.

If you want more quick tips & tricks FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @cbGameDev

Also, check out the parkour game I'm solo developing called Freerunners. Give it a wishlist if you like the way it looks!: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1430330/Freerunners/