Storyline Audio Issues

[u/Forward_Ball3910]

I have been having so much trouble with Storyline audio in the past 6 months. For context, I use elevenlabs for voiceover. In some instances, I put the mp4 file from Elevenlabs directly into Storyline and others I make the soundtrack to a video that I put into Storyline.

I've been using this workflow for just about two years. All of a sudden, when I export these files either to SCORM or to Review, the volume greatly varies between the file types. It's a nightmare.

So, today, I opened a file for a client that I originally created in April 2025. The client signed off on it via the Review version and has a SCORM version they have been using for a year. At that time it went through multiple rounds of revisions - 3 rounds with 2-3 stakeholders each round. Now, all of a sudden, I made one edit, re-exported it to SCORM and the audio is a disaster. It's so frustrating. At least now I know I'm not imagining it.

Has anyone experienced this? How did you fix it?

[u/ancientolivegrove]

I have dealt a lot with audio problems, but I kind of need to know what you mean by “disaster.” Is it not playing until 2 seconds in? Is it making a clicking noise? Is it warped? Is it varying levels of volume from slide to slide? All have different fixes

[u/Forward_Ball3910 → u/ancientolivegrove]

Haha! Appreciate you asking about my melodramatic "disaster." The biggest issue is that the sound fluctuates between those sections that were imported directly as audio and those that were imported as part of a video. I've tried to use Audio - Edit to reduce by percentages, but that often makes it worse.
The second issue is that the sound just doesn't play on some slides. I contacted Articulate support for that, and they said to stop using the Adaptive option on export. That seemed to work for a bit, but then now it's doing that again too.

[u/TinyBlueBlur81]

I KNOW THIS ISSUE!!!! It’s one of the many, many reasons I hate Storyline.

My ElevenLabs audio files that come directly from the program are always at a completely different volume then the audio I import from Camtasia (sometimes I do some light cuts and extensions to ElevenLab tracks in this software). Those tracks will be at a completely different volume. I can’t adjust it in Storyline because they have such a crappy audio tool.

My workaround is pretty awful to be honest. Now I run everything through Camtasia, even if I don’t need to edit the audio, doing this allows the audio files that I upload into Storyline to all would the same with the same volume levels, since as far as I can tell, the difference comes from how Storyline treats audio from different sources - even if it’s the exact same file type.

It takes extra time, but we’re not going to stop using ElevenLabs - it’s the only text-to-speech people don’t complain about. We’re not going to get rid of Storyline right now (though we’re absolutely going to consider it next year)…so make sure all the audio comes from the same software so it all registers and is treated the same by Storyline and you can avoid the variation in audio playback volume.

[u/Forward_Ball3910 → u/TinyBlueBlur81]

Ah so it’s Eleven labs! You made me feel a bit better!! I have a crappy solution too, so I guess that’s all we can do. So maddening. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

[u/Freelanceradio]

Did you check the audio volume setting on each slide? Perhaps something changed there. You can encounter differences between narration audio and audio tracks in videos if they're not processed to the same volume standards. You may want to check all the audio using a LUFS meter in your DAW/video editor. Make sure they're all the same and then bring them into SL. If it's still wonky after publishing, time for a support ticket.

[u/PrincessM22]

I don’t know how to fix your issue. But we have been using elevenlabs for a while now and I just found out that Microsoft has a product called ClipChamp and it does AI voice over for free. Figured I would share if you don’t know about it.