Ch. 19 · Audio, Display, and Skin — osu! Codex

19 Audio, Display, and Skin

2 min read✔ 1 fact checks💬 2 coach takesD4E1A3C2B1✎ Suggest a change

Use wired, low-latency audio and make hitsounds louder than the music. Tonehh uses 100% effects and 70% music, and khz recommends turning volume up in general. Keep some music: you're playing to a song, not a metronome. ^5,8

Fact check

Real-world data. Measured Bluetooth headphone latency is about 170 ms with the common SBC and aptX codecs (about 34 ms with aptX Low Latency). That's several times wider than the whole 300 window at high OD (±26 ms at OD 9), so wired headphones are the simple fix. ^46,164

Take: Community forums

Sit like a pianist: back straight, and let the grip follow from that. Experience-based. A forum guide that predates every video in this book puts posture first, before settings and skins, on the grounds that it decides how everything else feels. Nothing has measured it in osu!, but it costs nothing and the ergonomics evidence on wrist and forearm loading points the same way (Ch. 13). ^70,133
Effects volume well above music, and don't chase a perfectly centred hit error bar until rhythm improvements have stalled. Agrees with Tonehh. Same audio setup, and a sensible order of operations for offset (Ch. 7). ^12,70

See the game first. Wear your glasses if you need them, raise background dim, and turn off storyboards if they distract you. ⁴²
In lazer, input runs separately from drawing, so frame rates beyond your monitor's refresh rate buy little; the developers capped the frame limiter at 1,000 Hz because uncapped rates caused stutters. ^80,81

Avoid distractions: bright hit lighting, combo bursts, busy backgrounds, oversized numbers. ⁴²
If you're struggling and can't say why, a skin change is worth trying. Korilak switched skins while stuck on Hidden and Double Time maps and full-comboed them right away. ³¹
Dense followpoints help at very high AR (Ch. 8). Vivid, distinct combo colors help with Easy (Ch. 15).
If you can't hover the results graph to see UR, your skin's ranking-graph image may be blocking it; deleting that image restores the tooltip. ¹²

Korilak’s take

Sound and vision can be the problem when nothing physical is. Experience-based. Worth checking before rebuilding technique. ³¹

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Community discussion

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Forum threads about this chapterStart one

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Use wired, low-latency audio and make hitsounds louder than the music. Tonehh uses 100% effects and 70% music, and khz recommends turning volume up in general. Keep some music: you're playing to a song, not a metronome. ^5,8

Fact check

Real-world data. Measured Bluetooth headphone latency is about 170 ms with the common SBC and aptX codecs (about 34 ms with aptX Low Latency). That's several times wider than the whole 300 window at high OD (±26 ms at OD 9), so wired headphones are the simple fix. ^46,164

Take: Community forums

Sit like a pianist: back straight, and let the grip follow from that. Experience-based. A forum guide that predates every video in this book puts posture first, before settings and skins, on the grounds that it decides how everything else feels. Nothing has measured it in osu!, but it costs nothing and the ergonomics evidence on wrist and forearm loading points the same way (Ch. 13). ^70,133
Effects volume well above music, and don't chase a perfectly centred hit error bar until rhythm improvements have stalled. Agrees with Tonehh. Same audio setup, and a sensible order of operations for offset (Ch. 7). ^12,70

See the game first. Wear your glasses if you need them, raise background dim, and turn off storyboards if they distract you. ⁴²
In lazer, input runs separately from drawing, so frame rates beyond your monitor's refresh rate buy little; the developers capped the frame limiter at 1,000 Hz because uncapped rates caused stutters. ^80,81

Avoid distractions: bright hit lighting, combo bursts, busy backgrounds, oversized numbers. ⁴²
If you're struggling and can't say why, a skin change is worth trying. Korilak switched skins while stuck on Hidden and Double Time maps and full-comboed them right away. ³¹
Dense followpoints help at very high AR (Ch. 8). Vivid, distinct combo colors help with Easy (Ch. 15).
If you can't hover the results graph to see UR, your skin's ranking-graph image may be blocking it; deleting that image restores the tooltip. ¹²

Korilak’s take

Sound and vision can be the problem when nothing physical is. Experience-based. Worth checking before rebuilding technique. ³¹