Sounds that you import into Unreal MUST be WAV format, 16-bit PCM. As far as I know no other format is accepted. Luckily in Audacity (free and open source) it is very easy to convert any type of sound. Here I am exporting a FLAC file that I downloaded from www.freesound.org into a WAV.

When you import a sound in Unreal it is called a Sound Wave. If you want to be able to do things with it, you create a Sound Cue from the Wave. You can do that by right clicking on the Wave file and clicking “Create Cue”

The two main types of sound in a game are atmospheric sounds and sound FX.

First I am making an atmospheric sound. By clicking on the Output node of the Sound Cue I can adjust the attenuation settings of the sound (the range, how far a player can hear it for)

Also importantly I need this sound to loop. I click on the Sound Wave node and click Loop on the left hand side (you can’t see too well because of the comment window over the loop boolean).

Then I just drag the Sound Cue into the level. Here you can see the attenuation. Only when the player steps into that sphere will it hear the atmospheric sound. And it gets louder as the player approaches the center.

For Sound FX you usually want quick sounds that do not loop. Here I am putting together three jump sounds from freesound.org and putting them through a random node. That way when my player jumps it’s a different sound each time. This could be useful for a lot of things such as an NPC who screams something different each time the player is near, explosions that sound a bit different each time, etc.

Then to play the sound in Blueprints I just do a “Play Sound at Location” node every time the Jump action is executed.