Can I get the spectrum data of a bus?

Question

Is it posibble to get the spectrum data of a bus with the API?

I need to visualize the signal strength of audio that is being played in the game.

Answer 1

This is not exposed in the API directly.  However, there are some techniques for that:

Method 1 (require coding)

Create your own Effect plug-in.  You will receive the raw PCM data. You could, for example, use an FFT to extract the spectrum, and send it to your game directly.

You can take a look at the following help section in the Wwise SDK Documentation:​
https://www.audiokinetic.com/library/edge/?source=SDK&id=goingfurther__newplugins.html

You will be able to look at the Delay plug-in as an example.
SDK\samples\Plugins\AkDelay

Method 2 (less precise, but no coding)

For a 3 bands spectrum:

1. Create 3 game param: Low, Mid, Hi
2. For each game param: Set ranges from -48 to 0
3. Create aux bus: auxLow
4. In effect tab of aux bus, add:
   1. Wwise Parametric EQ: Low Pass, 200hz
   2. Wwise Meter: Output: Low
   3. Wwise Gain: Full-Band Channels: -96
5. Create aux bus: auxMid
6. In effect tab of aux bus, add:
   1. Wwise Parametric EQ: Low Pass, 1000hz, High Pass, 200hz
   2. Wwise Meter: Output: Mid
   3. Wwise Gain: Full-Band Channels: -96
7. Create aux bus: auxHi
8. In effect tab of aux bus, add:
   1. Wwise Parametric EQ: High Pass, 1000hz
   2. Wwise Meter: Output: Hi
   3. Wwise Gain: Full-Band Channels: -96
9. Send your sound to 3 aux bus: auxLo, auxMid, auxHi

Then, monitor the game parameters from Wwise directly, or using AK::SoundEngine::Query::GetRTPCValue.

Comments

Is it possible to use the 2nd method here, but target only specific audio events? Currently this method gets all of the audio going thru the channels.

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Can there be some clarification on how to send data from a plugin to the game engine, especially for commercial engines like Unreal or Unity?