Add audio to your animation

You can import, display, and play multiple sound files in a scene.

Note: Playback Speed must be set to Real-time in order to play sound properly. See Playback Speed in the Animation Controls menu.

To load an audio file into your scene

Do one of the following:
- Right-click the volume icon in the Playback Options and select Import Audio. Set Audio in the Files of Type menu to filter for supported audio formats. A file browser lets you select the name of the sound file(s) to import. If there is an audio offset embedded with the file, it will appear in the File Type Specific Options. You can also specify an offset in this field as well.
- Select Audio > Import Audio... from the Animation menu set (F4)
- Select File > Import from the main menu bar. A file browser lets you select the name of the sound file(s) to import. If there is an audio offset embedded with the file, it will appear in the File Type Specific Options. You can also specify an offset in this field as well.
- Drag the file(s) from a file browser into one of the Maya modeling views, or onto the Time Slider.
  The audio waveform fills the Time Slider
Note:
When you load a sound file 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, remember to change the filename referenced by your audio node.
Right-click the waveform on the Time Slider, and select Sounds from the Animation controls menu.
If you want to set a playback offset for your file on import, see the Audio Offset settings in the Import Options. You can also specify an offset for your file in Maya at any time in the Attribute Editor by right-clicking the waveform, selecting Sounds > <soundfile> > from the Animation Controls menu which opens the sound files's attributes in the Attribute Editor. Specify what frame you want the auio to start playing at in the Offset field. )

The peaks of the sound waves are visible in the Time Slider, and the Time Slider is ready to play or scrub the sound.

Note:

On Windows, if you are importing .wav files created on a Mac, you may need to convert the files to a Windows-compatible format before you can import them into Maya.

Maya supports the following audio file formats:

Platform	Audio file format
Linux®	.aiff, .wav, .bwav
Microsoft® Windows®	.aiff, .wav, .bwav
Apple® Mac OS® X	.aiff, .wav, .bwav, .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 also Display audio on the Time Slider.