In the Project Explorer view, select the Audio tab.

The Audio tab of the Designer layout is where you’ll spend most of your time when designing your game’s soundscape. The audio tab has four different hierarchies that each provide unique objects to accomplish various tasks related to triggering or manipulating how audio works in Wwise. You’ll keep your sounds in a Work Unit within the Actor-Mixer Hierarchy.

There are many different objects that can be created within the Actor-Mixer Hierarchy that you’ll explore over the next several lessons; however, if you simply want to play a given audio file, this is accomplished via the Sound SFX (Sound Effects) object.

	It is also possible to play sounds through Sound Voice objects; however, they are generally used for spoken dialogue as they have specific localization features used when releasing a game in multiple languages.

In the available object row, click the Sound SFX icon.

Name the Sound SFX Object IceGem_Blast.

The object name appears in red.

The red lettering indicates that there isn’t an audio file associated with this SFX object. You’ll need to add the audio file in just a moment, but before you go any further it’s important to understand that an SFX object does not directly represent an audio file. It instead represents the channel that the audio file will play through. You can equate it to the idea of a channel on a digital audio workstation. The channel has various controls that manipulate the actual audio files that are stored on the audio track that feeds through the channel. Once you understand this, you’re ready to add the audio file to the Sound SFX object.

Right-clicking an object provides many different options related to what can be done with that object, including importing an audio file to a Sound SFX object.

Right-click the IceGem_Blast SFX Object and choose Import Audio Files.

Click Add Files…

A dialog box opens prompting you to select the file you want to import.

The file you’re going to import is a WAV file. Wave files are relatively large and you may well think that you’d first want to convert the file to something like an MP3 file or even reduce its sample rate or bit depth to reduce the amount of information you are bringing in. This is not the case. Actually, you want to import your best quality original into Wwise as a Wave file and don’t worry about the size at this time. The beauty of Wwise is that you can later decide how you want to optimize the file’s size before integrating it into the game. In fact, Wwise has extensive features related to this which you’ll explore in Lesson 7. Think of it like a photographer wanting to always keep their 25 megapixel original and only worry about how to crop or compress the image based upon the need at the time they need to send someone the image.

Navigate to Lesson 1/Audio files for Lesson 1/, choose the IceGem_Blast file and click Open.

The Audio File Importer opens confirming which audio file you want to import to the SFX object.

Click Import.

The Audio File Importer window closes and you now see that the IceGem_Blast SFX object has turned blue.

The blue color indicates that an audio source, in this case a WAV file, is properly associated with the SFX object and that the audio file is currently being referenced in its original imported format.

As you work, you may notice some Sound SFX object names are blue while others are white. The color communicates if the associated file has been optimized through a conversion process which usually happens when you generate a SoundBank, which you’ll do later in this lesson. White object names indicate that the conversion has already taken place, where blue objects have yet to be converted. At this point, don’t worry if you see the color change from blue to white. You’ll learn more about optimization and the conversion process in Lesson 7.

Now it’s time to test your sound and make sure it’s playing through your system.

Click the IceGem_Blast Sound SFX object to make sure it’s selected.

Notice that the Property Editor view displays audio controls for the IceGem_Blast such as a volume fader.

Also, look in the Transport Control view and you’ll see the name IceGem_Blast. This indicates that when you press the play button, you’ll hear the sound as it’s going to be played in the game.

	The spacebar is the keyboard shortcut for the play button.

In the Transport Control view, click the play icon or press the spacebar.

You should hear the ice gem blast sound. You’ll also notice that there’s a meter in the toolbar as well as a meter view on the right side of the layout showing you the level of playback.