All-new sound

Rev Rush 1.2.0 · 7 October 2026 · free for every player

Version 1.2.0 rebuilds every sound in Rev Rush. All 21 worlds have a newly recorded soundtrack — the melodies players already know, note for note, now played by a band of instruments that belongs to that world alone. Obstacles, sky events, shields, the star and the menus were rendered again at studio quality, crashes sound like what you hit, and the mix finally has an order: the music steps back for the moments that matter. The update is free for everyone; none of it is part of Premium.

• 21 soundtracks recorded again
• 18.3 minutes of music, up from 5.5
• 48 kHz stereo music, up from 11 kHz mono
• 213 effects at 48 kHz
• 1.8 LU between the quietest and loudest world, down from 10.0
• 0 recordings

Listen: 1.1 against 1.2

Press play on any world and switch between 1.1 and 1.2 while it runs. Both versions run in step, so the switch lands on the same note. They also play at the same measured loudness (ITU-R BS.1770) — louder always sounds better, and a comparison that isn't level would prove nothing.

Each new track opens close to the original and builds from there, so its first seconds are the cleanest comparison: the same notes, recorded again. Then the world's own instruments join in, one layer at a time.

Same notes, new recording

The first thing tried for the new soundtrack was a new tune for the first world. It was turned down: the music players already knew was liked better, and the brief became to record that same music again so it would stop sounding cheap. So nothing was recomposed.

Each of the 21 tracks was transcribed from the game's own file — tempo, key, melody, bass, chords and articulation — and the transcription was rendered back and checked against the original in every sixteenth note before a single new instrument was added. The first world, for example: 150 BPM in C major, C–G–Am–Em then F–C–G–C, a 25 % pulse lead over a triangle bass — 58 notes out of 58 match.

What made the old tracks sound cheap was never the notes. It was the sound: 11,025 samples a second, which cuts off everything above 5.5 kHz, in mono, raw waveforms with no room around them, and loops of 5.3–22.9 seconds. The first world's loop lasted 6.4 seconds and came round again and again before you left it.

Loops that develop

A new track is built from the same material and grows: it opens close to the original, the world's instruments join layer by layer, a new instrument takes over the melody in the middle section, and then it loops back to where it began. The loops now run 41.5–68.6 seconds, and there is 18.3 minutes of music in the game instead of 5.5.

In the game, each track loops on a window counted in samples, and the tail of the recording is rendered so it flows into its own beginning. The AAC encoder always pads the start of a file; with the loop built like this, the padding can't reach the seam, and the seam never clicks.

Every sound means one thing

In 1.1, seven sounds carried twenty-seven meanings. The same power-up chime played when you picked up a shield, used one, grabbed the star, bought a skin or bought Premium. The crash — the sound of dying — also played when you didn't have enough coins, and when you tapped a locked colour in the garage: the game played its death sound at the very moment it offered you something.

Shields and the star

• Shield picked up — a rising arpeggio with an icy shine.
• Shield into reserve — the same voice, three notes in unison and a click, a little quieter.
• Shield breaks — ice cracks and the arpeggio falls.
• Last shield, SAVED! — the break, then E–G–C rising in the voice of the rescue, ending on a C-major chord.
• Star — a rising glide with sparks.
• In 1.1 — one power-up chime for all of these, and for every purchase.

Menus, garage and store

• Tap, back and tab — short and quiet.
• Switch on and switch off — in 1.1, both were the coin.
• Picking a colour — each row of the garage palette has its own note: light, pure, dark.
• Locked — a soft lock with a golden shimmer. It invites; it doesn't punish.
• Not enough coins — two quiet falling tones.
• Bought with coins — a cascade of coins.
• Premium — the biggest fanfare in the game, about two seconds, in stereo.
• Purchase restored and run shared — each its own.
• In 1.1 — the crash, for dying, for a locked colour and for an empty wallet.

Crashes sound like what you hit

Every obstacle in Rev Rush is made of something, and now it sounds like it. Nineteen materials map to eight impacts. The moving obstacles carried their material all along; the 42 static ones — walls, crates, pyramids, piles — never had one in the code, so a table now gives each its own. A snake hits like a body, a delivery bike like metal, a fire whirl like fire, a mud geyser like soft ground.

• Stone
• Metal — metal and engines
• Wood
• Ice and crystal
• Body — growling animals, wings and shells
• Soft — slime and snow
• Fire
• Air, water and magic — wind, waves, gas, spells, bursts and paper
• Falling into a hole — not a crash at all any more: the air rushes past and a dull thud comes from far below.
• In 1.1 — one crash for everything.

The worlds, at 48 kHz

The obstacles have voices of their own — 143 of them — and 16 signature moves have one more. Players know them, so they were not replaced: the same generator rendered every one again at 48 kHz, with the same random draws and the same decisions, so each keeps its character and only the grit is gone.

The 21 sky events — thunder, eruptions, waves, auroras, meteors — are the same sounds up to 10.5 kHz, with fresh air added above. The eight that fill the whole screen now play in wide stereo: thunder in the storm, the gust in the snow, the wave at sea, the volcano's rumble, the downpour in the jungle, welding in the factory, the gas in the swamp and the ice cracking in the glacier cave.

• Thunder — Storm
• Eruption — Volcano
• Wave — Sea
• Cracking ice — Glacier Cave

A mix with an order

In 1.1 everything was loud, and nearly equally loud. A row of coins played over the melody, the loudest sound in the game was the rescue chime rather than a new record, and the music jumped by 10.0 LU between worlds — set the volume in the first world and the eighth was hard to hear.

1.2 sets a hierarchy: the music under the world and the rider, rewards above them, the big moments on top. The more often a sound comes, the quieter it is — the coin, which arrives a hundred times more often than a record, is now 5.35 dB quieter. Every track has a volume of its own, so all 21 worlds sit within 1.8 LU of each other.

When something big happens — a crash, a fall, a new record, a rescue, a new world — the music steps back by 4 dB and the world by 2 dB for under a second, so the moment comes through without anything getting louder. The levels are set so that the iPhone's own limiter — which turns everything down when the sum gets too loud — only rarely has to step in, and then by half a decibel.

Every sound was checked on two listening profiles: the iPhone speaker, which plays almost nothing below 500 Hz, and headphones. Sounds that lived in the low end got harmonics the speaker can actually play.

Paused, the music goes behind glass

Pause a run and the music keeps playing, muffled, as if through a window — then comes back clear when you continue. The game computes the muffled copy itself from the track that is playing, runs it in step with the original and crossfades in 0.3 seconds. The game-over card keeps the music as it is.

What stayed the same, on purpose

Some sounds players know by heart. The coin, the jump, the record, the rescue and the jingle into a new world are the sounds they always were, rebuilt note for note at 48 kHz. The difference is in the details: the old coin started at full volume, so every coin clicked across the whole band; this one doesn't.

• Coin
• Jump
• New record
• Rescue with a heart
• Into a new world

Just as much was tried and turned down after listening on the phone: an engine, tyres on the ground, a landing thud, a whoosh for close calls, an ambience under every world, a sound for the end of the turbo, new variations of the obstacle voices and a new tune for the first world. What came out of it is a rule: a sound you already know is worth more than a new one.

How it was made

The studio is written in Python on numpy and scipy and runs at 48 kHz: band-limited oscillators that don't alias, FM, modal synthesis that builds metal, glass and wood out of ringing resonances, plucked strings, filters, saturation and a synthetic reverb. Every file goes through the same mastering chain — loudness measured to ITU-R BS.1770, true peaks kept below −1 dBTP, dither on the way to 16 bits. Each sound seeds its random generator from its own name, so running the studio again rebuilds every file to the last bit.

The new sound arrived one step at a time. Each step was built, installed and listened to on an iPhone before the next one started, and nothing went into the game that hadn't been heard on the phone first.

This page plays the files the game ships, taken from the game and not re-encoded. The 1.1 versions are the original files the game played until version 1.1.3. The pixel art has the same story on How it's made, and every world is described on Worlds.

Questions

Get Rev Rush on the App Store