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Positioning Sound and Music Objects

At a very basic level, your sound and music objects can use either 2D or 3D positioning.

The main difference between the two types of positioning is the way in which the source channels are mapped to the output speakers. In 2D positioning the source channels are linked together, whereas in 3D positioning each input channel can be output to any speaker in a surround environment. The positioning method can be changed at runtime through an RTPC on the Positioning Type.

For 2D sound and music objects, you can use a panner to balance the volume of each channel so the sound or music object can be heard through different speakers.

For 3D objects, however, there are two separate things to consider when positioning your sounds: the actual position or location of the sound emitter within the 3D space and its distance from the listener. To deal with both of these issues, you have the following tools in Wwise:

  • Attenuation - Simulates the natural weakening of an audio signal as the sound emitter moves and/or turns away from the listener.

  • Spatialization - Determines the actual location or positioning of the sound or music object.

For added flexibility, the spatialization information can be either of the following:

  • User-defined - Where the positioning information is predefined in Wwise using specific animation paths.

  • Game-defined - Where the positioning information is calculated using the actual position of the sound emitter in game.

[Note] Note

The Game-defined and User-defined positioning information is used to determine the spatialization within the surround environment; but, it is also used to calculate the distance for attenuation.


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