Initialization settings

All settings related to the Wwise Integration can be found in the Unreal Project Settings, under the Wwise section. This section includes initialization settings for all of the supported Wwise platforms that are available in your UE4 installation. Modifications to settings in editor will only be taken into account after restarting the editor; however, using the "Standalone" play mode will initialize a new instance of the SoundEngine with the current settings. It is possible to copy/paste data among the settings structures of platforms even when their structures are not identical; UE will fill what matches and ignore the rest.

Integration Settings

• Max Simultaneous Reverb Volumes
  The maximum number of Ak Reverb Volumes that can affect a sound. Setting this to zero disables all Ak Reverb Volumes in game. Note that Ak Late Reverb Components found on an actor that also contains an Ak Room Component are not affected by this setting.
• Wwise Project Path
  The location of the Wwise project for the UE4 game. The Wwise integration requires this path to create the Wwise assets required for the game using the Generate SoundBanks function within the Unreal Content Browser (or Build menu). This path is relative to the editor's executable directory (usually <UE4_installation_directory>/Engine/Binaries/Win64), as given by FPlatformProcess::BaseDir() in the Unreal Engine.
• Auto Connect to WAAPI
  Enables the automatic connection of the Unreal Editor to Wwise via the Wwise Authoring API (WAAPI).
• Wwise Sound Bank Folder
  The relative location of the Wwise Soundbanks for the UE4 game and editor.
• Default Occlusion Collision Channel
  The default collision channel used for audio occlusion calculations.

User Settings

• Wwise Windows Installation Path
  The location of the Wwise Authoring Application on your Windows development machine. This option will need to be updated when a new version of the Wwise Authoring Application is required by the integration changes.
• Wwise Mac Installation Path
  The location of the Wwise Authoring Application on your Mac OS X development machine. This option will need to be updated when a new version of the Wwise Authoring Application is required by the integration changes.

If these paths are not correctly set, Unreal will fail to generate the Wwise SoundBanks required for the game.

Initializing the SoundEngine

The SoundEngine initialization steps are performed in the FAkSoundEngineInitialization::Initialize() method. In this method, the memory, streaming, IO, sound engine, platform, music engine, and communication settings can be configured.

Plug-ins can be registered by including their associated plug-in factory header file in .../Plugins/Wwise/Source/AkAudio/Private/AkAudioDevice.cpp under the line saying: // Add additional plug-ins here.

Linking against a plug-in's library can be done by adding a call to the AddWwiseLib() function for the plug-in in .../Plugins/Wwise/Source/AkAudio/AkAudio.Build.cs, near the other plug-ins. Once this is complete, the UE4 game project will have to be rebuilt from its Visual Studio solution or Xcode workspace.

Please note that a limitation in Unreal Engine 4 prevents rebuilding an Unreal plug-in from a Content-only (Blueprint) project. Therefore, third-party Wwise DSP plug-ins are not available in a Content-only (Blueprint) project, as this method requires rebuilding the Wwise Unreal plug-in.

For more information on SoundEngine initialization, refer to the Initialize the Different Modules of the Sound Engine section in the Wwise SDK documentation.