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Audio Preferences

You can customize the audio playback parameters for the Wwise authoring tool by opening the Audio Preferences dialog from the Audio menu.

[Note] Note

The audio preference settings affect only local audio playback within the Wwise Authoring tool. These settings do not affect the audio playback in-game, or when Wwise is connected to a remote platform.

Interface Element

Description

Audio System

Specifies the system API used for audio output. It does not affect the game sound engine.

  • Detect - The Wwise default, wherein Wwise looks for the first matching system based on a hierarchy where it looks first for XAudio2, then WASAPI, and finally DirectSound.

  • WASAPI - The Windows Audio Session API, also used on Mac. Refer to MSDN for more information about WASAPI.

  • XAudio2 - A Windows-shipped cross-platform audio API from Microsoft, which typically yields low latency.

  • DirectSound - A deprecated Windows-shipped audio API from Microsoft. DirectSound might be more compatible with older computers.

Output Buffer Count

Specifies the number of output buffers the Wwise authoring tool will use when playing sounds and motion effects, balancing output stability versus latency for the current user.

[Note] Note

The Output Buffer Latency values do not affect the game sound engine buffer size.

Samples Per Output Buffer

Specifies the number of audio samples per output buffer, balancing output stability versus latency.

Output Latency

Indicates the output latency, as determined by the output buffer parameters.

Music Track look-ahead time (ms)

Specifies the amount of time reserved by the sound engine so it can seek the streaming data. This track-latency time is useful to avoid desynchronization or voice starvation problems when playing back your music objects in Wwise, which result from the fact all objects are streamed when played back in the Wwise authoring application, even if the stream option has not been selected.

Default value: 200
Range: 0 - 10,000
Units: milliseconds

Hardware Devices

Specifies the Audio Device ShareSet and hardware device attached to a Master Bus. The list of devices contains all the devices supported by the currently active Audio Device plug-ins. It is possible that a hardware device is present multiple times in the list, if it can be accessed through different plug-ins. When set to Default, the device is selected by the Audio Device plug-in used by the bus. If that Audio Device plug-in is not available on Windows, it will fall back to the Windows' Default Audio Device. This selection is used only for the current user, not in-game, and not when Wwise is connected to a remote platform.

Multi-Core Rendering

Enables use of multiple CPU cores for audio rendering.

Enable System Audio Objects

Allows Wwise to reserve System Audio Objects, preventing any game or application running alongside Wwise from acquiring them. If you are trying to audition System Audio Objects from within Wwise, this option should be enabled.

If you are trying to hear System Audio Objects from a game running alongside Wwise on the same PC, this option should be disabled. This prevents Wwise from reserving system objects, allowing your game to acquire them. The result is that any Audio Object that would normally have been sent out from Wwise as a System Audio Object will instead be mixed to the Main Mix.

[Note] Note

On Windows, there is a limited number of Microsoft Spatial Sound objects that must be shared across all currently running processes, including games and applications. Some versions of Windows have a bug that prevents active Spatial Sound streams from acquiring objects after they are freed by another process. The stream must be restarted in order to acquire them. You may have to restart the sound engine in order to circumvent this bug.


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