Adding sound to your animation

When creating an animation, you sometimes want to hear the soundtrack to help you synchronize the placement of keys with points in the soundtrack. Keys are markers that specify timing and motion for animations. For more information on keys, see Keys.

NotePlayback Speed must be set to Real-time in order to play sound properly.

Importing sound

Maya supports the following audio file formats:

Platform	Audio file format
Linux^®	.aiff, .wav
Microsoft^® Windows^®	.aiff, .wav
Apple^® Mac OS^® X	.aiff, .wav, .mp3

Known limitations for importing sound

You cannot import a sound file whose filename begins with a number.
If you created the sound file on a different machine, ensure that all codecs used to create the file are also installed on the machine where you plan to import the file.
On Mac OS X, you can only drag and drop .mp3 files onto the Time Slider. You cannot import them using File > Import. See Add sound to your animation and Time Slider for information on displaying sound on the Time Slider.

When a sound file is loaded into a scene, an audio node is created with the same name as the filename. This node has a reference to the location of the sound file. If you move the sound file to a different location, you will have to make sure that you change the filename referenced by your audio node. For more information, see Import an audio file.