Wwise Fundamentals

On top of the Actor-Mixer and Interactive Music hierarchies sits the Master-Mixer hierarchy. The Master-Mixer hierarchy is a separate hierarchical structure of busses that allows you to re-group and mix the many different sound, music, and motion structures within your project and prepare them for output. The Master-Mixer hierarchy is divided into two sections: one for sound and music, and one for motion. Each section consists of a top-level “Master Bus” and any number of child busses below it.

You can choose to route sound, music, and motion structures through these busses using the main categories within your game. For example, you may want to group all the different audio structures into the following four categories:

These busses not only create the final level of control for the sound, music, and motion structures within your project but they can also determine which sounds are affected by environmental effects such as Reverb. Because they sit on top of your project hierarchy, you can use them to create the final mix for your game. Depending on the platform, certain effects, including environmental effects, may also be applied to the busses to create that immersive experience that your game requires.

You can also use the audio bus structure to troubleshoot problems within your game. For example, you may want to solo specific voice, ambient sounds, or sound effects busses, to identify specific sounds or music.

The following illustration shows an example of a Master Audio Bus hierarchy that uses two preliminary busses to separate the environmental versus the non-environmental sounds and then uses several other audio busses to regroup some of the sound structures in the Actor-Mixer hierarchy and some of the music structures in the Interactive Music hierarchy.

	Note
	A similar hierarchy can be created at the same level under the Master Motion Bus for all the motion structures in your project.