Playing Sound Backwards?

Question

I just started using WWise.

How do I reverse the playback direction?
 
I'm creating a virtual Tape Recorder for a Game and I need this to implement rewind, backwards playback and scrubbing.

Answer 1

Hi Milan,

Wwise doesn't support playing sounds backward. You may want to produce and import a reverse version of these audio files and crossfade between forward and backward at runtime.

Also, from the SDK documentation, check for "GetSourcePlayPosition" and "Seek". That will probably helpful to implement your Tape Recorder.

Hope this helps,

Simon

Comments

Hey Simon.
Thanks.

The Tape recorder is supposed to record the output of the Master Bus of the Game.
Then it should instantly be possible to scrub through the recording, or rewind it.

I guess the recording part is doable with AK::SoundEngine::StartOutputCapture()...

However, since it's not possible to play backwards, after each recording, i would have to generate a reversed version of the newly recorded file and wait for the conversion to finish before i am able to scrub and rewind ?

Would that be the way to go, or can you think of a better way to achieve the desired effect?

Cheers,
Milan

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> i would have to generate a reversed version of the newly recorded file and wait for the conversion to finish before i am able to scrub and rewind ?

That could work, but would be far from ideal.  You will end up with  performance issues when reversing the recorded output.

Answer 2

I suggest you implement new Wwise Effect inserted at the master bus level (see AkDelay in samples for an example).  This would be your Tape Recorder.

• During normal playback, the effect records the audio coming in
• When activating the reverse mode, the effect stop recording and rewind the audio

Please note this will require considerable amount of memory for recording the audio.

 

 

Comments

Could you elaborate?
Do you mean, writing my own plugin that does what i need?
I wouldn't be able to do that.

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yes, you would need to write your own plug-in for that.  This requires C++ and signal processing knowledge.

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Hi Bernard is possible to play a sound backwards from Unity using de SDK or API something like AkSoundEngine.pitch = -1;