Wwise® – WaveWorks Interactive Sound Engine® – features both an optimized sound engine for managing audio processing and a non-linear audio authoring tool for creating audio asset structures, integrating interactive music elements, defining audio propagation, managing sound integration, and creating SoundBanks. The tight integration of the audio authoring application and the sound engine allows you to audit, profile, and modify sounds in real-time within the game itself.

Wwise Product Brochure (.pdf)

Wwise is a comprehensive Audio Pipeline Solution that consists of

Audio Authoring Application

By centralizing all aspects of audio creation in an easy-to-use interface, the Wwise audio authoring tool simplifies the audio creation workflow. The advanced functionality in the Wwise interface makes it easy for sound designers to

• Build audio asset structures,
• Integrate dynamic game-driven musical scores,
• Define audio behaviors,
• Mix audio levels,
• Define environmental audio propagation,
• Manage sound integration,
• Monitor and profile audio performance in real time,
• Generate SoundBanks for games.

Wwise is designed for authoring audio on-the-fly and in the context of a game. Its streamlined workflow supports every phase of audio development and allows you to create, audition, and tweak sound effects or subtle sound behaviors with just a few clicks of a mouse and without programming assistance.  Wwise also makes it easy to fine tune more granular parameters for individual audio assets, to modify or apply global parameters to an entire colony of game characters at once, and to oversee and manage audio assets at all levels.

Sound Engine

The Wwise Sound Engine offers game developers greater control throughout the development cycle. The optimized software-based architecture provides seamless cross-platform support and is designed to be easily integrated into any game development pipeline. By reducing repetitive programming, the sound engine frees up programming resources to allow for the customization of the game engine to fit the specific audio needs of any game.

The Wwise Sound Engine currently supports the following platforms:

• Windows XP/Vista™ (32 bit and 64 bit)
• Xbox 360™
• PLAYSTATION®3
• Wii™

Game Simulator

Using the Lua scripting language, designers or programmers can reproduce exact sound behavior in the game. The Game Simulator scripts can access all of the functionality of the Sound Engine, allowing you to validate sound behaviors and to profile the performance of Wwise on each platform before the integration of Wwise into the game engine.

Plug-In Architecture

The sound engine supports an extensive scalable software plug-in architecture that allows for effects and other Wwise components to be quickly customized based on specific game or technological requirements. By leveraging the powerful technology of the Wwise sound engine, sound designers and audio programmers can create unique effects without having to deal with such internal problems as managing voice buffers, I/O, sample accuracy, or persistence.

Wwise plug-ins can be created in the following areas:

• Source Effects
  Programmers can create and integrate custom source effects into the sound engine.
• Audio Effects
  To further enhance a game, programmers can create and integrate custom source effects. In addition, Wwise ships with a series of industry standard audio effects plug-ins.
• Source Control
  Programmers can create a source control plug-in that will allow Wwise to be seamlessly integrated with existing configuration management systems. Wwise ships with Perforce® and Subversion plug-ins , allowing it to be integrated directly into any existing Perforce installation.

Interface Between Wwise and World Builders (SoundFrame®)

Programmers can use the SoundFrame SDK to integrate the SoundFrame plug-in directly into their world building applications. This, along with bi-directional communication, makes Wwise functionality available directly in the various world building applications, game editors, or 3D applications, including 3ds Max®.