FAQ - Soundef

• offset vs delay? offset is time from event trigger to layer start (ms, e.g. metal offset 17ms). We use offset to avoid confusion with a DSP delay line.
• Do I need a mixer? No pane - select a timeline lane → its gain/pitch/offset/probability appears in Controls as sliders/fields. Mute/Solo and a master bus are deferred; final gain is sum layers + hard limiter -0.1dB with a red clip dot.
• Bake clipped / red dot? Hard limiter at -0.1dB prevents file clipping, but we warn bake-clipped and show a persistent red clip dot on the final waveform + controls meter. Lower gain and re-bake.
• Absolute paths? sources: [swords/body_01.wav] is relative to sounds/ (also sounds/swords/... alias is accepted). No /absolute or ../ escaping. The schema rejects path-outside-sounds and pack Export/Import checks paths.
• Why no auto-save? The spec editor is a VS Code-like buffer: preview runs from the buffer (instant, preserves comments), the file is only written on manual Save (Cmd+S, ● dirty). External writes reload silently if clean, otherwise a banner shows changed on disk - [Load] [Keep].
• Read vs write metadata? Forge reads audio tags on palette hover for search. It never writes into sounds/* files.
• Import/Export pack? Use File → Export Pack and File → Import Pack to share soundefs and sounds. The pack includes a manifest.