How to test unfinished custom sounds in studio from local files

higbeaad · August 23, 2020, 8:04pm

Introduction

One thing that’s always annoyed me is the fee for uploading sounds. Not only is it annoying to have to pay in general, but if you want to change something after you’ve uploaded it, you have to pay again for each change!

In this tutorial, I am going to teach you how to test and preview your unfinished custom sounds in studio without having to upload them to the site.

Step 1: Finding the “content” folder

First, you’re gonna need to find where the Roblox “content” folder is stored on your PC. There are separate ways to do this for different operating systems, but I’ll just be going over the procedure for Windows 10.

Open windows search (in the taskbar) and search for Roblox Studio. Once you’ve located the app, right-click on it and choose “Open file location”.

This should take you to a folder containing shortcuts to both Roblox Player and Roblox Studio. Right-click on Roblox Studio and again click on “Open file location”

You should now be in one of the version folders for Roblox Studio. Find and open the folder named “content” and then the subfolder “sounds”. This is where we will be storing our sound files.

Step 2: Adding the audio file

Now that you’ve found the content folder, simply copy and paste your .mp3 or .ogg audio file(s) into it. If you want, you can create subfolders within the sounds folder to organize the files.

Step 3: Using the local sounds in studio

Now that your audio files are ready to use, you can start working with them by setting the SoundIds of Sound objects in your game to the rbxasset:// URL of your custom sounds.

The rbxasset:// URL will look something like rbxasset://sounds/your_sound.mp3. If you organized your sounds in subfolders, you will need to include those in your path.

If you did everything correctly, your local sound should now be playable. Enjoy!

Notes and limitations

These sounds will only work in studio.
If studio updates, all existing local sounds that were installed before the update may fail to load.
In Team Create, these sounds will always fail to load for other developers working with you (unless they have the same local sounds installed too)
Keep in mind that this isn’t (to my knowledge) officially supported behavior, so it may break in the future.
This tutorial was inspired by this comment on XAXA’s Local File Importer plugin. Maybe one day we’ll get an application to do all this automatically

Closing

Thanks for reading! I hope this tutorial can save you a buck or two; nobody wants to waste their Robux on uploading unfinished sound effects and music multiple times.

KUW_Alt1 · November 19, 2023, 2:30am

This doesn’t seem to work at all. I did everything right, but the isloaded property becomes unchecked when switching to a file sound, and I get this error in the output.

Failed to load sound rbxasset://sounds/duke.mp3: Unable to download sound data  -  Studio

hmnidp09 · February 7, 2025, 2:56pm

Fun fact:

I don’t know specifically when or what version, but recently it’s possible to play custom music from your computer both in roblox/live servers & studio.

And that means anyone can put ANY SONG in their game, as long as every player download the songs & put it in the sounds folder. But if the roblox application can accept that, then it could accept meshes, decals, etc, stored locally, but I didn’t test it yet just because i’m always ‘too busy’.

Archi_verX · February 22, 2025, 1:21am

Would this go against TOS if you add something like this to your game?

For example, if it includes a sound-playing GUI and lets a player type in “rbxasset://sounds/SomeAudioName.AudioExtension” in a public game so they can listen to music on their computer?

hmnidp09 · February 23, 2025, 1:01pm

oh boy this is a tough question; i am also not a lawyer, so please take this “rant” with a pinch of salt and this is also not legal advice.

ideally, y e s, but idk why Roblox didn’t remove this ‘feature’ (probably because I think it didn’t get enough attention) after 3 community notes as it’d be pretty reasonable, because spreading downloaded copyrighted songs is a form of piracy, and not even uploading it is against the rules.

If the song (or its remix or other version) is not obscure enough, you ‘could’ get permission from the composer(s) or publisher [if all composers were dead].
There are options for non -copy righted music BUT AT SOME POINTS, all of those songs just won’t fit for your game, your magnum opus or whatever.
These lin ks show steps on how to gain rights for music, but there is still so much stuff to “worry” like people can abuse the reporting system to have you banned.

But what if, your game `ever` gets popular AND ATTENTION, with songs so obscure that it could only be found in vinyl channels?

People download the ‘required’ songs (even though you can replace those by using the same name), & make videos playing your game and stay; until one day (unluckily), those youtube videos got taken down by the publisher, or got copyright spammed in those videos, or your game or account. These posts say that you could replace that with an original song or pay the legal fees. (or find another song that is as much obscure as your song or remix/cover it.)

But what if you value your ART over LEGALITY?
or you don’t care about legal issues that you would rather be banned than change it?

Music can be noise, but it could also be a way to express your game/story in a unique way, and could transcend the experience more if the game is already good. That is a generic point there, but you could definitely pay someone to compose or yourself (but that would take too much of your time, especially if the game is a passion project all by your own), just so that you wouldn’t be in any of this ‘nonsense’, and avoid having to download all songs because you can avoid the distributing process and already upload it.

But what if that song creates the atmosphere that no other can recreate?

I care about the music & its atmosphere, the level design & its gameplay, the lore, everything in my future ‘games’ because I created it out of passion. And what if there’s a barrier that blocks your passion in legal actions? Then you have to be persistent of defending it (but you have to solve on what goes and what doesn’t with yourself or your lawyer, if you have) or ‘naturally’ have nothing to do about it because you know it’s wrong, but there should be creative freedom right? Mine will all have the potential problem of censorship because of being ‘too mature/realistic’ if it’s released right now. But when will that threshold go down? I have seen a lot of games with mature themes that are universally basic, that I think they’re testing the waters, to see if the Company wants more mature games. (well, as long as it’s profitable for them and have the games not promote anything against the rules)

A bit off-topic there, I could discuss that part in a later time bc that would be distracting, going back I think that it wouldn’t violate as long as you gave (and optionally show proof) of that permission or sometimes (if you could check their website, mainly go to discogs.com for the publisher & hopefully they didn’t dissolve) the publisher is fine about it (or literally not be popular/influential to not get that kind of situation), it is non-commercial (not for profit), premium payouts (idk why disabling it still isn’t a thing) would be donated to the composer; but everything can be exploited, so this could be a risky move as it can be removed anytime.

Going back, I feel like that the answer is no, ~~because~~ for the past years roblox have given us more control of our games and feel like this is intentional, I think this addition is an optional but great step to age up their platform and freedom. (this statement was too much in positive light, no way it would ever be like that)

Morally though, it depends if you want to get the best experience for your game as much as possible, but there’s a possibility of getting banned if someone cared enough and reported you. (that is the worst possible decision by the player, the composer, the fan of that composer, the publisher, and anyone; besides, who would care for that game right? As long as people don’t want to lose that experience [because it is entirely up to them if the game is obscure], I am sure that you would be fine, but AI is still there so be careful.)
Also if there was a GUI, it is the players choice to play it in-game even though you could in a media player.

In my way, I would ‘mostly’ rather make than “steal”, for enjoying the process of making my never-ending passion project.

ENDING NOTE: I don’t want to go more into this, 'cause I don’t know what the opposing side (ROBLOX corp. and the publishers) want, because possible legal situations like this never happened before in this platform. Also if this “problem” gets reported, i’m pretty sure my post will be outdated if an update ever rolls out. (I still didn’t contact support about this potential ‘suable liability’ though)