The question is usually asked as if there is a correct number. “Should the jump sit at 2 kHz? 500 Hz? 1 kHz?” The honest answer is that there is no single correct number, because the frequency a jump needs to occupy depends on what the music is already using. A jump does not need to be louder than the music. It needs to be in a band the music has left open, and that band is different for a bass-heavy electronic track than for a sparse piano loop.
What can be answered is a narrower question: given a typical platformer music mix, which bands are most likely to be available, and how do you carve one if they are not? The sections below work through the perceptual reason the jump needs a specific band, the bands music typically occupies, and the two ways to make room — a static EQ carve or a dynamic sidechain — before checking the result in the full mix.
Why the Jump Needs to Sit Where the Ear Is Most Sensitive
The human ear is not equally sensitive across the spectrum. It is most sensitive to sounds between 2 kHz and 5 kHz, with a peak sensitivity around 3–4 kHz . A sound that occupies this region is perceived as louder at the same sound pressure level than a sound in the bass or the extreme treble.
That sensitivity is the reason a jump can cut through a dense mix without being loud. If the jump’s defining transient and its upper harmonics sit in the 2–5 kHz region, the ear will pick them out even when the overall level of the jump is below the music. If the jump’s energy is concentrated below roughly 500 Hz, it competes with the bass and kick, where the ear is less sensitive and where the music is usually loudest.
This is also why a jump that sounds fine in solo can disappear in the game. In solo, there is nothing to mask it. In the mix, if the jump’s energy is in a band the music already fills, the music masks it, and the jump only becomes audible if its level is raised enough to overcome the masking — which is the beginning of the volume war the rest of this article is trying to avoid.
What the Music Is Usually Using, and What It Leaves Open
A conventional mix divides the spectrum into bands that are useful for describing where instruments sit: sub-bass 20–60 Hz, bass 60–250 Hz, low midrange 250–500 Hz, midrange 500 Hz–2 kHz, upper midrange 2–4 kHz, presence 4–6 kHz, and brilliance 6–20 kHz .
A typical platformer music track — drums, bass, chords, a melody — will have significant energy in the bass and low midrange, and the melody and chord voicings will occupy the midrange. The upper midrange and presence region is often the least crowded part of the mix, because those bands are where cymbals and “air” live, and a lot of game music does not push them hard.
That is the opening a jump can use. A jump whose attack and upper harmonics sit in the 2–5 kHz region is sitting where the music is typically thinner, and where the ear is most sensitive. A jump whose energy is in the 250 Hz–1 kHz region is sitting directly in the middle of the chords and the melody, and it will be masked unless the music is carved or ducked.
The conventional jump synthesis recipe — a square or triangle wave sweeping 400 Hz to 800 Hz over 80 ms, with a total duration of 100–150 ms — puts the fundamental in the low midrange and the harmonics in the midrange . That is a perfectly good jump in isolation, and it is exactly the range where a dense music mix will compete with it. The fix is not to move the whole jump up to 2 kHz — a jump that starts at 2 kHz sounds like a laser, not a jump. The fix is to keep the fundamental where it reads as a jump, and make sure the attack and upper harmonics extend into the 2–5 kHz region, where they can be heard even when the fundamental is partially masked.
The First Option: Carve a Static Hole in the Music
The most direct way to make room for a jump is to subtract energy from the music in the band the jump needs. One game audio text describes this as creating “a hole in the frequency spectrum of the music” so the sound effect can be heard .
A static carve is an EQ cut on the music bus, centred on the band the jump occupies. The cut does not need to be deep. A 2–4 dB reduction over a moderate Q — roughly half an octave to an octave — is often enough to lift the jump out without making the music sound thin. The cut is applied for the whole track, not just when the jump fires, because a static carve is a mix decision, not a dynamic one.
The advantage of the static carve is that it is predictable. The music is shaped once, the jump is authored once, and the relationship between them is stable across the whole session. The disadvantage is that it costs music energy even when the jump is not playing. In a game where the jump fires constantly, that cost is usually acceptable. In a game where the jump is rare and the music is the main event, a static carve is the wrong tool.
The sound effects versus music guide covers the broader relationship between the two buses; the jump-specific carve is a narrow application of the same principle.
The Second Option: Duck the Music Only in the Jump’s Band
A static carve is blunt because it removes music energy all the time. A dynamic duck is more precise: it reduces the music only while the jump is playing, and only in the band the jump occupies.
Full-band ducking — lowering the whole music bus every time the jump fires — is the wrong version for a platformer, because a jump fires so often that the music would be permanently pumping. Frequency-specific ducking is the version that works: a sidechain compressor or a dynamic EQ that reduces the music by a few dB in a narrow band, triggered by the jump’s signal, and released quickly.
The documented example of this approach is Baldur’s Gate 3, where the audio team moved from volume-based ducking — which produced what they described as a chaotic “EDM-like” mix — to a frequency-based sidechain that carved out specific ranges when critical sounds needed to shine . The jump case is simpler than a spell, but the principle is the same: the music is not turned down, a narrow band of it is moved aside for the duration of the sound.
A practical setup for a jump is a dynamic EQ on the music bus, sidechained to the jump bus, with a 3–6 dB reduction in the 2–4 kHz region, a fast attack (under 10 ms) and a release matched to the jump’s length (roughly 100–200 ms). The fast attack ensures the carve is in place before the jump’s transient arrives; the short release ensures the music returns before the next jump, so the duck does not accumulate into a permanent dip.
What to Measure Before Choosing a Band
The band the jump should occupy is not a universal constant. It is a function of the music, and the way to find it is to look at where the music is actually using energy.
A spectrum analyzer on the music bus, played during a representative section, will show which bands are dense and which are relatively open. The jump’s attack and upper harmonics should be aimed at a band that is 3–6 dB below the music’s densest region in the same frequency area — enough that the jump is not competing with the music’s peak energy, but not so far that the jump sits in a band the playback device cannot reproduce.
For a typical platformer track with a strong bass and a midrange melody, that band is often 2–4 kHz. For a sparse, high-register track, the open band may be lower, around 1–2 kHz. For a dense, bright track, the open band may be higher, around 4–6 kHz. The point is not to memorize a number; it is to read the music and place the jump where the music is not.
The phone speaker guide covers the device-side constraint: the band the jump occupies also has to survive a small speaker. A jump carved into a band that only exists on studio monitors is a jump that disappears on a laptop. The 2–5 kHz region is a good target partly because it is where small speakers are most efficient.
The Check That Settles It: The Full Mix, Not the Solo
The frequency choice is correct when the jump is audible in the mix without being louder than the mix. The check is a comparison, not a measurement.
Play a scene with the music at its normal level and the jump firing at its normal rate. Then mute the jump and listen to the music alone. If the music sounds noticeably different — if it has a hole that is obvious when the jump is absent — the carve is too deep or too wide. If the music sounds the same with and without the jump, the carve is either inaudible or nonexistent, and the jump is probably not cutting through.
The working state is in between: the music sounds slightly fuller when the jump is muted, but not enough that a player would notice the hole. The jump is audible when it fires, and the music does not feel damaged when it does not. That balance is the actual answer to the question, and it is a balance found by listening in context, not by picking a frequency from a table.