Audio

Audio in Old School RuneScape comprises in-game music, jingles and sound effects. Unlike RuneScape 3, Old School continues to follow the style and technology of how audio sounded in its August 2007 backup rather than continually updating and reworking it.

All music in the game are MIDI files played through the soundbank. All music can be played and seen on the Music Player. Unlisted music tracks are either used for cutscenes or are unused in the game files, and have the ability to loop. Jingles are also used for cutscenes and any moments to play a piece of music, though it does not loop.

See music, unlisted music tracks and jingles for a list of all music found in-game. Below is a list of all music related updates. All versions of each piece of music can be found under the "Versions" section of the respective track's article.

Duration for music tracks is defined in the cache, due to it being manually defined some songs are cut off or have period of silence after ending.

RuneScape 2's music player was reworked on 6 March 2007. As part of this rework, all of the game's existing songs at the time were updated with the new Soundbank.

With the initial release of the music player on 15 March 2004, music sounded significantly different to Old School RuneScape. The music player utilised the MIDI output device on a player's computer, which was dependent on the sound card. As such, music tracks could sound completely different depending on the computer hardware used. To address the inconsistency, the music player was rewritten in early 2007 to utilise a bank of instruments built into the game, which ensures music would sound the same regardless of the computer hardware.^[1] All existing songs (456 listed and 17 unlisted at the time of the update) were updated to better reflect the new music player's sound. Old School RuneScape uses the music system derived from the audio rework.

The last music tracks released prior to the rework were Creature Cruelty, Magic Magic Magic, Mutant Medley, and Work Work Work, all as part of the Tower of Life quest on 19 February 2007. The first music track released after the rework was Zombiism, alongside The Great Brain Robbery on the same day of the music update.

Historical versions of songs hosted on the Old School RuneScape Wiki use the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth for the MIDI device. This was bundled with the Microsoft Windows operating system and was a common way to experience music prior to the rework.

• Harmony, 2004 version. Generated according to player's computer soundcard, in this case the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth.
• Harmony, after March 2007. Using the Soundbank sounding identical on all computers.

With the release of Fossil Island on 7 September, several instruments in the soundbank were changed. Pad 2 (warm), Tremolo Strings, Church Organ, String Ensemble 2 (Slow Strings), Acoustic Grand Piano, Orchestral Harp, Music Box and one sample of String Ensemble 1 all had slight changes that had an effect on 84.3% of music in the game at that time.

This was reverted on 5 October 2017

• Nora's Melody, after 7th of September. The piano and volume of instruments being different due to soundbank changes.
• Nora's Melody, after 5th of October. Using the original Soundbank.

In June 2023, an audio bug was introduced affecting a few music pieces. When loading a MIDI file, the game will prepare by checking every note played to utilise the correct sounds for each instrument note on each output track. However, some MIDIs incorrectly had set several instrument tracks to the same output track, causing only one instrument to be used for all tracks for that output. As such, notes which were intended for a different instrument did not have the correct notes prepared, and therefore would not play at all.

• Original pre-soundbank version, plays all notes in the right instruments at 00:32 and 01:40.
• Current version, misses notes and sets all 3 tracks to choir 00:32 and 01:40.

The 16-bit music update was an update to all music in the game on 9 April 2025. It raised the music of the game from 8-bit depth to 16-bit depth. Beforehand all music in the game had "a very subtle layer of white noise in some of the music tracks", which the update helped to reduce.^[2]

• 8-bit version of Rose, with a faint noise floor.
• The current version of Rose, lacking a noise floor.

	Unique drop sound effect
A sound effect that plays for receiving unique drops from bosses released since Phantom Muspah.

Sound effects are short pieces of audio used throughout the game. Effects are either generated with a custom synth, or since the release of Sailing stored as audio files.

Unlike music tracks and jingles, sound effects are not MIDI files being played through the soundbank, and thus several can be played at the same time. Sound effects can only be a maximum of 10 seconds, and therefore are commonly played together and in sequence to create a lot of the sounds in-game.

As of 9 April 2025, there are 10,211 sound effects in-game. For comparison, Old School only had 3,827 upon its launch.

Since RuneScape 2, sound effects were in 8-bit depth with a 22,050 Hz sample rate, the bit depth caused a noticeable level of noise in all sound effects. As of 10 September 2025, all sound effects were converted to 16-bit making the noise floor inaudible, a change which was first announced in the Behind the Scenes: 16-bit Audio blog.

All sound effects are made with in-house Jagex software synth tool. Every synth is made up of up to 10 tones, each with their own synth/filter parameters. Each tone consists of up to 5 harmonic oscillators generating a waveform. Each oscillator's volume and pitch can be set relative to the base amplitude and frequency, and the phase can be controlled with a delay setting. The base frequency is determined using an envelope with a configurable minimum and maximum. The base amplitude is determined similarly. Both frequency and amplitude can be modulated by another wave, these waves are configured the same way as the base frequency/amplitude are. The final 2 envelopes on the main panel, labeled "gap on" and "gap off" are a bit different. These don't configure a wave that modulates the output, but instead turn the output on and off intermittently. This can be used for frequency synthesis, by choosing a square wave with a frequency of 0Hz a constant positive "voltage" can be generated for this purpose. Reverb can also be enabled, with a configurable delay and volume. Finally, each tone has an optional configurable filter.

	Magic tree shimmer
An area sound of a magic tree shimmering.

Area sounds are a subset of sound effects. They are akin to ambient noises and are not solely tied to character (player or non-player alike) actions. They may be additionally played from the environment and scenery objects. A notable example is the shimmering of magic tree. Area sounds were added on 27 September 2006.

Sound effects and area sounds volumes can be adjusted in the settings. The sliders have 20 notches with each notch increasing volume by five per cent. The hit sounds setting allows changing the player character's groan sounds when taking more than zero damage between "Type A" and "Type B", respectively associated with body type A/male and B/female characters regardless of the character's body type.

The 16-bit sound effect update on 10 September 2025 also affected sound effects in-game, raising the sound effects from 8-bit depth to 16-bit depth.

• 8-bit version of Humidify, with a faint noise floor.
• The current version of Humidify, lacking a noise floor.

	Yama's jingle
A sound effect mimicking the sound of a jingle.

The digital audio update was released on 19 November 2025, alongside the release of Sailing. The update allowed sound effects to be played by any audio file, and is not limited by the abilites of the in-game synth or the MIDI format, and also allows DSP effects to be applied to audio.