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Working with Speaker Panning

By default, Speaker Panning is set to Direct Assignment, meaning a sound or music object's channels are assigned directly to the corresponding channels of their output bus, regardless of the position or orientation of the listener or game object. You can, however, use the Speaker Panner's Balance-Fade option to balance the volume of each channel within the sound or music object so that they can be heard at varying levels through the channels of an output bus.

The Speaker Panner contains a two dimensional graph view with X and Y coordinates that simulate the "pan" and "fade" controls of a car panner. You can drag the black circle that represents the point source anywhere within this graph view to change the amount of power routed to the channels of the output bus.

The actual power distribution depends on the output bus configuration. For example, the Y coordinate has no effect when the output bus is stereo. Note that side speakers of a 7.1 configuration are at their maximum level when the black circle is in the middle.

Some sounds, such as character voices, are key to the game play; so, you may want to route their signals to the center speaker to ensure audibility. The Center % controls allow you to define the amount of the signal that will pass through the center speaker. For more information on using the Center % controls, refer to Routing Audio Signals to the Center Speaker.

Speaker-panned sounds can be used for a variety of purposes in your game, such as menu sounds and character voices.

[Note] Note

The Balance-Fade Speaker Panner has no effect on an ambisonic sound.

Attenuation

In addition to panning, you can define the attenuation of an object. The attenuation settings simulate the natural weakening of a signal as it moves away from the listener. Wwise uses a series of curves to map Wwise property values, such as Volume and Low-Pass Filter, to specific distance values. With these curves, you can create a sophisticated distance-based roll-off for your objects. To add even more realism, you can also use sound cones that attenuate the sound based on the orientation of the object in relation to the listener. For more information on defining the attenuation of your panned objects, refer to Applying Distance-Based Attenuation.

Panning for motion objects

For less sophisticated motion devices, such as game controllers, you should use Direct Assignment Speaker Panning because the motors within these devices cannot simulate a 3D environment. There may be some situations, however, where you might want to reduce the intensity of a motion signal based on the proximity of the source. In these cases, you can activate the Listener Relative Routing, with 3D Spatialization set to None, in order to use the attenuation settings.

To define the channels of a panned object:

  1. Load a top-level object into the Property Editor.

  2. Switch to the Positioning tab.

    [Note] Note

    If the object is not a top-level object, you must select the Override parent option before you can set the Positioning options.

  3. Select the Balance-Fade option from the Speaker Panning list.

    The Edit… button activates.

  4. Click Edit… to open the Speaker Panner.

  5. Drag the black circle, which represents the point source, to any position within the 2D plane.

    The volume or intensity of each channel will be adjusted to simulate the position you specified.

[Note] Note

You can specify exact values using the X and Y coordinate text boxes.


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