Wwise 2013.1 Now Available


Wwise 2013.1 is now available for download (released on May 14, 2013). This new release focuses on new features, workflow enhancements, performance and bug fixes. Here is an overview of some of the new features.


HDR Audio

High Dynamic Range audio provides a revolutionary way of looking at the audio reproduction of high dynamic scenes by increasing the standard 96 dB of dynamic range found in 16 bit systems to as high as 200 dB.

HDR audio is a dynamic mixing system in which the loudest playing sound automatically lowers the volume of the other playing sounds. The resulting effect is a more focused mix and a better voice count which enhances run-time performance.

Source Loudness Normalization

Wwise now offers non-destructive loudness normalization of audio sources. Normalization is transparent to all volume-based logic (virtual voices, HDR) and to the new Voice Monitor profiling view, simplifying mixing and visualization.

Meters: Loudness, True Peak, Peak and RMS

Wwise provides two new meter views types:

  1. Standard Meter view: Peak, True Peak or RMS
  2. Loudness Meter view : based on ITU-R BS.1770-3 and EBU R 128 standards. The loudness short and momentary values can also be monitored over time in the Performance Monitor view which helps spot level problems occurring during a game play session.

New View – Voice Monitor

The Voice Monitor profiling view shows the voice volume of all playing sounds compared to one another. When the view is used to monitor HDR audio, it shows either the volume of each sound and the effect of the moving window at the input of the HDR bus, or the resulting volumes for each sound after the HDR effect at the output of this same bus.

New platforms

Wwise now supports the following three new platforms:

  • PlayStation®4
  • Windows Phone
  • Windows 8:
    • Desktop
    • Windows Store App on Intel devices and on ARM tablets

Limbo

The award-winning game Limbo is now available from the Wwise installer for anyone interested in studying the Wwise project while connected to the game. You can come up with your own sound design of the game by replacing the audio files, object properties and behaviors.

Bus – Positioning and Channel Configuration

Two new features for performance enhancements and mixing have been added to busses and auxiliary busses:

Channel Configuration:

By default, busses use the channel configuration set by the game (typically 2.0 or 5.1). Now, 1.0, 2.0, 4.0 and 5.1 can specifically be set per bus which opens up creative avenues while using less resources, for example when a bus with inserted effects forces a mixdown.

2D Positioning:

Center % and 2D panner can now be used to pan the output of busses and auxiliary busses in the surround field.

‘Single-Click’ Workflow

No need to double-click to explore the object properties if you prefer activate-on-selection. Simply enable the option 'Inspect object when selection changes' in the User Preferences and then you will be able to update views with a single-click or by changing selection using the keyboard arrows.

New Property: ‘Initial Delay’

All sounds and containers now have the 'Initial Delay' property that can make certain scenarios such as adding delay between sounds trivial. There is no longer the need to using 'Play' action delays or inserting silence in hierarchies.

Performance Enhancements

Android now runs 10% faster. Vorbis and many effects have been optimized on several platforms. Here's an overview of the performance factors (as a reference, 1x represents status quo while 2x means that an effect runs twice faster than before):

  Xbox 360 PS3 Wii U
Matrix Reverb - - 4.6x
Flanger 1.1x to 1.8x 1.3x 1.5x to 2.4x
LPF 1.2x 1.8x 1.1x
Time Stretch 1.1x to 2.4x 1.3x to 1.6x 2.5x to 3x
Convolution Reverb 1.3x to 1.7x 1.1x to 1.3x 8x to 10x
Guitar Distortion 1.4x to 1.7x 1.1x to 1.5x 1.4x to 2x
Tremolo 5.5x 1.25x 4.4x
Harmonizer 1.1x to 1.2x 1.3x 1.5 to 2.2x
Vorbis Up to 2% Up to 4.5% 10 to 15%

Interactive Music – New Switch Assignment System

Switch transition rules across different state groups are now feasible with the new switch assignment UI. This new system is inspired by the dynamic dialogue events and allows the same type of features like the fallback mechanism and the weighting.

Source Editing

It is now possible to make non-destructive edits on audio sources in Wwise after import. Here’s an overview of the supported workflow:

  • Trim: It is possible to trim the beginning and ending of sounds. The trimmed parts are removed from the files at conversion time which reduces the SoundBank sizes.
  • Fade: Fade in & out can be added to the beginning and ending portions of the file.
  • Crossfade: Loop markers can be moved in the file and crossfade can be added to fix difficult loops.
  • HDR Envelope: Active range envelopes can be authored to customize the HDR effect of selected files.

Miscellaneous

  • 2D/3D : It’s now possible to set both 2D and 3D positioning settings on audio objects and change at runtime with a RTPC. This feature can eliminate the duplication of audio structures for objects shared between the main character and NPCs for example.
  • Attenuation Editor: Aux Send Volumes curve is now split in "User-Defined" and "Game-Defined" curves.
  • Support for VC2012.
  • List View: Expand/collapse have been added to show children of the selected objects.
  • Plug-in API improvement: Full game object position info now exposed to source and insert effect audio plugins. Position info includes:
    • Authored positioning type
    • Listener associations
    • Listener positions
    • Scaling ratios
    • Absolute game object positions expressed in Cartesian coordinates
    • Game object positions relative to listeners expressed in spherical coordinates

See the release notes for more information on this version.