AkReverbVolume not working in custom game project in UE4

Question

Hi,

We are seeing that AkReverbVolumes are not working in our custom game prototype (based on UE4 ShooterGame) and we are running UE4.4.2, WWise 4.4 Integration, and WWise v2013.2.9 (64-bit).  AkReverbVolumes do work in the ReverbDemo.umap for us.  Normal AKSounds and PostEvent are working for us so we know that the soundbanks are being properly generated.  We know that WWise is being properly initialized by seeing the line "LogInit: Audiokinetic Audio Device initialized.".  We also have initialized the iZotope and Convolution Reverb plugins (and have valid licenses for those plug-ins).

In our own WWise project we have mirrored the bus setup of the ReverbDemo project to include a Reverb bus under "Master-Mixer Hierarchy" -> "Default Work Unit" -> "Master Audio Bus" -> "Reverb".  This reverb bus has one simple iZotope Hybrid Reverb effect of "Auditorium (Custom)".  

We set up a looping ambient sound in the level and then we drag an AkReverbVolume on top of it with box brush size (2000, 2000, 2000).  We make sure the 'Enabled' checkbox is checked, the AuxBusName is 'Reverb', Send Level is 1, Fade Rate is 0.5, and Priority is 10000.  There are no other overlapping volumes in that space.  

When we regenerate the soundbanks and preview the level, we are able to hear the looping ambient sound but the AkReverbVolume does not affect it even though the sound is clearly within the bounds of the reverb volume.  The ambient sound is placed via Unreal, we also have sounds attached to a pawn that are posted by WWise and those sounds are not affected by reverb either. There are no logs or errors messages printed out anywhere.  

Can you advise on what we should check next to get reverb working?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Did you try connecting the profiler to your game?  

• Start your level
• Click the Remote button in Wwise (toolbar)
• Connect to the game
• Press F6 (Profiler Layout)
• Look at the Advanced Profiler tabs

Answer 2

There actually was a bug up until last week with the 4.4 (and less) integration with Ambient Sounds and Reverb Volumes, see https://www.audiokinetic.com/qa/607/how-do-i-enable-reverb-for-an-ambient-sound-in-ue4 .

The fix was pushed to GitHub last Thursday, so you will want to make sure you get the latest revision from GitHub.

Comments

Hi Bernard,

I did try connecting the profiler to my game but the profiler hangs on a dialog that says 'Connecting to 127.0.0.1'.  I am running the editor on the same machine as the WWise Editor so 127.0.0.1 is the correct IP address.  I have also tried the actual machine IP address and that doesn't work either.
UE4 reports 'Soundframe successfully initialized' when WWise starts the remote profile but that 'connecting' dialog never goes away.

I have made sure that the port set in WWise matches the AK::Init() port in UE4 and that Windows Firewall is off, remote profiling still doesn't work.

I have already integrated the latest GitHub 4.4 release from last Thursday and that didn't fix the ambient sound and reverb volume issue for me.

Is there any additional information I can provide to help troubleshoot?

---

There is a known issue on some machines that we are having a hard time tracking, where exiting Unreal will create a "phantom" process holding on to the necessary network socket, and preventing you from reconnecting to your game.

The workaround is to log out and log back in. You should then be able to connect Wwise to the Unreal Editor, as long as you don't quit the Editor. This should allow you to profile your game.

Also, just to make sure, In Wwise, have you checked the "Use game-defined auxiliary sends" checkbox on your ambient sound?

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Hi Benoit and Bernard,

You guys actually nailed the issue, I didn't have 'Use game-defined auxiliary sends' checked on the sounds we were using.  That seems to be working now, but I've run into another issue specifically on convolution reverb.

Every time we try and add convolution reverb, we're getting the error:

LogAkAudio:Error: Plug-in media unavailable

We've got the convolution reverb effect in a bank that's building in Unreal, and when I check the profiler, it appears as though that bank is properly loaded.  Any idea what could be causing the game to be unable to locate and use convolution effect media?

Thanks for your help, we're super close :)

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Hi Benoit,

You are correct - we didn't have the 'Use game-defined auxiliary sends' checkbox set on our sounds and this is the reason why those sounds were not being directed to the reverb bus.

Also, we are using the logout workaround for the profiler and that seems to be working for us too.  We can now see the sounds going to the reverb bus in the remote profiler.

The last problem we are running into is an error "LogAkAudio:Error: Plug-in media unavailable" when we put a Convolution Reverb or Altiverb IR effect on that sound.  Standard reverb works for us without error.

We have followed the steps in the UE4 documentation and WWise SDK 'Initialize Different Modules of Sound Engine' documentation to enable Convolution Reverb.

#1:  Input a WWise Level C trial license key that includes all WWise plug-ins.  We are able to preview Convolution Reverb and Altiverb effects within the WWise Designer.

#2:  Linking the plug-in libraries.
We added the following line to Audiokinetic.build.cs:
     AddWwiseLib(Target, "AkConvolutionReverbFX", akPlatformLibPath);

#3:  Registering the plug-in within EnsureInitialized() in AkAudioDevice.cpp:
     AK::SoundEngine::RegisterAllBuiltInPlugins();
     AK::SoundEngine::RegisterConvolutionReverbPlugin();

#4:  Regenerate all sound banks.

I can't find any documentation about this specific error message, could advise?

Thanks for all the help, much appreciated!