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Wwise SDK 2021.1.14
Release Notes 2021.1

The following sections list and describe the changes to Wwise between version 2019.2.9 and version 2021.1.
Platform-specific information can be found here:

For earlier versions, please refer to Previous Release Notes.

New Features

  • WG-32040 Added a new query syntax, Wwise Authoring Query Language (WAQL), to greatly enhance project search capabilities.
  • WG-37429 Standardized the upper portion of the Property Editor across views and made it more compact.
  • WG-40303 Added user preference to select font typeface and size for better accessibility and readability.
  • WG-42535 Added Profile Only mode to the Remote Connection options. This new option allows fast connection to a remote PC or game console for profiling and prevents sound engine changes due to unexpected synchronization.
  • WG-43127 Breaking Plug-in API Change! Object-Based Configuration is now available on mixing busses:
    • Deprecated Mixer Plug-Ins
    • New Object Processor Effects AK::IAkObjectAwareEffectPlugin
    • AK::IAkSourcePluginContext::NodeID has been removed in favor of AK::IAkVoicePluginInfo::GetAudioNodeID
    • AK::IAkMixerPluginContext is now available to all Effects inserted on busses.
    • AK::IAkMixerPluginContext::Compute3DPositioning() in_fSpread and in_fFocus arguments' range has changed from [0,100] to [0,1].
  • WG-43531 (New Wwise Authoring Plug-in API) Added State and Linked status property accessor to the PropertySet interface.
  • WG-44017 Added stomp allocator to AkMemoryMgr. Enable with AkMemSettings::uMemoryDebugLevel = 2. This is a debug only allocator that uses a "page per allocation" style allocation strategy to trap most invalid writes. Note that this allocator is very slow and uses a large amount of virtual memory. As such, enable to track specific problems rather than by default for development.
  • WG-46032 (WAAPI) Added call ak.wwise.core.profiler.enableProfilerData to enable profiling data from WAAPI.
  • WG-46426 Added new field in the Query Editor to execute WAQL queries.
  • WG-46885 Added new menu in the Segment Editor to edit Music Segment Custom Cue times and color in Multi Editor.
  • WG-46920 Added AK::MemoryMgr::DumpToFile to allow dumping of current allocations to a file.
  • WG-46966 Added runtime memory debugging to AkMemoryMgr, accessible via AkMemSettings::uMemoryDebugLevel. This enables leak tracking and very basic integrity checks.
  • WG-47071 On Work Unit file changes outside of Wwise, Wwise now attempts to reload only the changed Work Units as opposed to reloading the entire project.
  • WG-47308 Added new experimental WEM Opus codec with performant seeking behavior.
  • WG-47415 Improved usability of the Effect Editor when the Effect is showing monitoring information.
  • WG-47487 Added two new options in the Conversion Settings to force the conversion of imported sounds to 5.1 or to 7.1 formats.
  • WG-47492 Wwise Reflect Effect plug-in can now output Audio Objects if its parent's bus configuration is Object-Based.
  • WG-47542 Added two new Spatial Audio functions to the API to add obstruction to paths without using diffraction and geometry. The new functions are:
    • AKRESULT SetGameObjectToPortalObstruction(AkGameObjectID in_gameObjectID, AkPortalID in_portalObjectID, AkReal32 in_fObstruction)
    • AKRESULT SetPortalToPortalObstruction(AkPortalID in_portalObjectID0, AkPortalID in_portalObjectID1, AkReal32 in_fObstruction)
  • WG-47794 Added debug C runtime allocator hooks for AK::MemoryMgr.
  • WG-47948 Color Picker button has a new look with a paint palette.
  • WG-48049 The Bus Property Editor now shows more information about the processing status of the bus.
  • WG-48356 Removed Opus encoder Frame Size parameter. This has no impact on the quality of the encoding and improves decoding performance.
  • WG-48591 Added ancestor and descendant filtering of music transitions.
  • WG-48609 Default assert handlers now print a stacktrace.
  • WG-48612 Added Memory Manager allocation tracing system.
  • WG-48811 Added a tooltip to show custom cue times in the Music Segment Editor.
  • WG-49192 Added Ping column to Remote Connections dialog box.
  • WG-49210 (Mac Authoring) The 3D views are now available.
  • WG-49453 Added information to indicate if a bus is mixing (processing) or not. Bus icons show if it is mixing (processing). The meter captions also indicate if it is mixing or not, and a tooltip indicates the reason it is mixing (processing).
  • WG-49658 (WAAPI) Added ak.wwise.core.profiler.getAudioObjects to retrieve the Audio Objects from a profiling session. Also added to ak.wwise.core.profiler.getVoices and ak.wwise.core.profiler.getBusses the ability to get a single voice or bus using a pipeline ID.
  • WG-49689 System Audio Device now shows profiling information.
  • WG-49906 Replaced the legacy Opus codec with Audiokinetic's WEM Opus encoder.
  • WG-49923 Added 3D Audio support on the System Audio Device.
  • WG-50144 Emitter spread cones are now visible in the Game Object 3D Viewer, when enabled. They are displayed as defined by the attenuation ShareSet for a sound, or as calculated by Spatial Audio, in the case of radial emitters and rooms and portals.
  • WG-50198 Added a setting to change the text size in the Game Object 3D Viewer.
  • WG-50261 Added the ability to create Work Units under Music Switch Containers.
  • WG-50456 Added a collapsible splitter to the Performance Monitor for the Value list.
  • WG-50503 (New Wwise Authoring Plug-in API) Added write functions to DataWriter for uniformity with the PropertySet interface.
  • WG-50632 Added keyboard shortcut F2 to rename Transitions in the Transition Matrix.
  • WG-50699 (Mac Authoring) Added a menu option to scan for project and Work Unit changes.
  • WG-50780 Added new context menu when holding the SHIFT key to generate a WAQL query and copy it to the clipboard.
  • WG-50972 Object-Based metering is now supported in Mastering Suite.
  • WG-51105 (Spatial Audio) AK::SoundEngine::SetMultiplePositions is now fully supported by Spatial Audio emitters. Spatial Audio now computes diffraction, transmission, and reflection paths for each sound position.
  • WG-51107 (Spatial Audio) The transmission path is now shown in the Game Object 3D Viewer, along with the associated transmission loss, expressed as a percentage.
  • WG-51236 Added Music Transition Filtering and added Work Units under Music Switch Containers
  • WG-51261 (Spatial Audio) The transmission loss value calculated for each connection on the wet path is now taken as the maximum of the upstream and downstream room. Previously, this value was taken as the maximum of the room upstream of the connection and that of the listener.
  • WG-51277 Added column "Plug-in Name" to List View.
  • WG-51315 (WAAPI) Added accessor "pluginName".
  • WG-51347 (Spatial Audio) An aperture value is now calculated for all sound paths passing through one or more portals. The aperture represents the smallest portal opening along the path, measured by the approximate solid angle subtended on the listener. The aperture restricts the maximum spread of a sound and can now be viewed in Obs/Occ tab of the Advanced Profiler.
  • WG-51421 (Spatial Audio) Improved the algorithm for portal spread calculation. The new algorithm is more efficient and prevents the spread from collapsing to 0 if the listener is 90 degrees off-axis of the portal.
  • WG-51465 (Spatial Audio) Added the new API AK::SpatialAudio::SetGameObjectRadius to support radial sound sources.
  • WG-51541 (Spatial Audio) Added a new built-in Game Parameter for Transmission Loss.
  • WG-51581 A warning icon is now issued in Mastering Suite anytime the plug-in is processing Object-Based audio in unlinked mode.
  • WG-51650 (Spatial Audio) The Portal transition region has been extended radially outwards from the corner of the portal opening, to provided full continuity when entering a portal from the side.
  • WG-51677 Live plug-in monitoring data is now shown even when not capturing.
  • WG-51772 Meter can now show the history of a profiling session that has been captured.
  • WG-51879 (Spatial Audio) Reverb and room tones now propagate between rooms that are connected only with a disabled portal, via their transmission path. A disabled portal can now be used to couple rooms together for the sole purpose of reverb transmission, when no diffraction path between the rooms is desired.

API Changes

  • WG-44180 (WAAPI) The Project object is now accessible by querying the root path '\'. Querying the project's path now returns '\'.
  • WG-47068 (WAAPI) Accessors containing ":" character now also exist as an alias with no semicolon. Refer to ak.wwise.core.object.get.
  • WG-47378 AK::IAkMixerPluginContext::Compute3DPositioning now takes Spread and Focus values between 0 and 1.
  • WG-47493 (WAAPI) Commands ShowListView, ShowSchematicView, and Search can now take a text value (i.e., a string) to search text in the project.
  • WG-47651 Made the following changes:
  • WG-48177 Added aligned realloc to the Memory Manager interface.
  • WG-48200 The Spatial Audio API underwent various changes. Most of these changes are documented explicitly in the Migration Notes' Spatial Audio section. In addition, a few structure fields and function parameters were added or removed:
  • WG-48344 Merged rpmalloc 1.4. Now using an rpmalloc first-class heap for media allocations to reduce cache overhead.
  • WG-48570 Removed AK_ALIGN_DMA, AK_ALIGN_FASTDMA and AK_ALIGN_SIZE_FOR_DMA macros. No replacement required.
  • WG-48746 Added new plug-in service AK::IAkMixerPluginContext::ComputePositioning to compute panning gains.
  • WG-49885 SpatialAudio API update: AkPortalParams Extent type changed from AkVector of AkExtent, which has halfWidth, halfHeight, and halfDepth members. These should be set by the game according to its coordinate system.
  • WG-50061 AK::IAkVoicePluginInfo does not inherit from AK::IAkGameObjectPluginInfo since busses are also associated to game objects. Pushed IAkPluginContextBase::GetAudioNodeID() to the base class IAkPluginContextBase, and removed the duplicate accessors, such as GetBusID.
  • WG-50236 The Wwise Authoring Plug-in API has been rewritten for better separation of concerns and improved compatibility.
  • WG-50501 Removed the unsupported WritePascalString and WriteUtf16String functions from the legacy plug-in API.
  • WG-50872 (WAAPI) Renamed "skin" to "theme". Command ReloadCurrentSkin has been renamed to ReloadCurrentTheme.
  • WG-51017 Moved some of the functions in AK::IAkGlobalPluginContext for mixing (MixChannel, Mix1inNChannels, MixNinNChannels, ApplyGain, and ApplyGainAndInterleave) to a new interface, AK::IAkPluginServiceMixer. You can fetch the interface by calling AK::IAkGlobalPluginContext::GetPluginService(), or using the AK_GET_PLUGIN_SERVICE_MIXER macro. Over time, other functions for signal processing will be added to this interface, as well as other "service" interfaces, to allow plug-in developers to leverage existing functionality inside of Wwise for Effects, including functionality that takes advantage of processor-specific enhancements.
  • WG-51251 Breaking change! Simplified plug-in allocation interface IAkPluginMemAlloc by removing the "debug" versions of the functions. The memory debug functionality is now hidden in the plug-in host.
  • WG-51622 Added timestamp to NotifyMonitorData for the plug-in API.
  • WG-51809 (New Wwise Authoring Plug-in API) Removed byte swap flag from monitoring functions: little-endian is assumed.
  • WG-52710 - Added emitterPos field to AkDiffractionPathInfo for returning the position of the emitter used in this diffraction path when using the QueryDiffractionPaths API.
    • Added transmissionLoss field to AkDiffractionPathInfo for returning information about the current transmission loss for an emitter when using the QueryDiffractionPaths API.
  • WG-53241 Removed obsolete platforms from PlatformID namespace.

Behavior Changes

  • WG-48027 In Spatial Audio, the spread calculation has been improved for the wet path going through portals.
  • WG-48038 The distance used to compute spread and focus now corresponds to the real distance between the emitter and listener when the channel configuration of the output bus is fully 3D, that is, it has height channels, is ambisonics, or is Object-Based.
  • WG-48178 AkArray now uses aligned realloc.
  • WG-48575 Out-of-memory message now additionally displays information concerning memory type.
  • WG-50447 Added exclusive RTPC support to the predelay parameter in all Wwise reverb Effects, for initialisation of predelay before playback.
  • WG-50776 Sound now propagates between Rooms that are only connected with disabled portals.
  • WG-52087 Performance metrics are now reported at every frame.
  • WG-53299 The behavior of the global callback location AkGlobalCallbackLocation_PostMessagesProcessed has changed such that the callback is only executed once per buffer rendered. The callback is now executed when messages have been processed at any time between the current buffer and the previous buffer, where as previously it would potentially get executed multiple times per buffer rendered, if there were multiple batches of messages to process. The location of the callback has not changed.

Performance Changes

  • WG-47172 Improved performance of audio resampling algorithms, especially where AVX2 is available. Most notably, this should provide a 10% increase in throughput performance when playing back most Vorbis audio sources.
  • WG-47544 Improved performance for Effects that utilize the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm, especially on platforms where AVX2 is active and enabled. This delivers improvements, such as:
    • Throughput performance of Convolution Reverb and Filter Effects improved by 1.3x-1.7x.
    • Throughput performance of Harmonizer and Time Stretch Effects improved by 1.5x-1.75x.
  • WG-51121 Advanced mode of the Mastering Suite's Limiter module has been optimized. The module is now 37% more efficient.
  • WG-51334 Improved Spatial Audio monitoring data memory usage.
  • WG-51775 Meter drawing has been optimized for better performance.

Miscellaneous Changes

  • WG-41575 Obstruction/Occlusion Data and SoundBank Data are now enabled by default in the Profiler Settings.
  • WG-45796 Moved the Make-Up Gain property from Source Settings to General Settings.
  • WG-47656 Added new 3D Audio Objects demo page in IntegrationDemo.
  • WG-48720 Removed support for migration of Wwise Projects from versions earlier than 2013.1. It remains possible to migrate such projects to 2021.1 by first migrating to 2019.2.
  • WG-50376 Separated acoustic texture factory assets from Reflect.
  • WG-50769 Can now import 192 kHz audio files.
  • WG-51039 Updated the Details panel in the Unreal Editor for AkSpatialAudioVolume. Changes to surface reflectors can now be made for multiple faces across multiple Spatial Audio Volumes.
  • WG-51169 The Mastering Suite Effect is now inserted on an Audio Device instead of the Master Audio Bus.
  • WG-51546 Moved the Room Extent Opacity slider to the Spatial Audio Debug section in the Game Object 3D Viewer Settings.

Bug Fixes

  • WG-41982 Fixed: (Windows Authoring) Crash dumps display incorrect OS version number.
  • WG-42927 Fixed: Keyboard shortcuts don't work when focus is on 3D Meter or Game Object 3D Viewer.
  • WG-43214 Fixed: SoundBanks cannot be generated at the root of a drive when authoring on Windows.
  • WG-44531 Fixed: Wwise Wave Viewer keeps a lock on the file.
  • WG-45632 Fixed: The user could move secondary playheads in the Source Editor while paused.
  • WG-46046 Fixed: Visual glitch in the rulers of Game Sync Monitor and Voices Monitor when scrolling.
  • WG-46286 Fixed: WwiseConsole.exe does not provide feedback during move-media-ids-to-single-file and move-media-ids-to-work-units operations.
  • WG-46388 Fixed: A non-required dependency forcing to link with Commcentral.lib when profiling while not using it.
  • WG-46564 Fixed: For plug-ins with multiple media items, media modification does not have an immediate effect.
  • WG-47257 Fixed: When creating a new project with characters that are not allowed, the top edge of the OK button is missing.
  • WG-47312 Fixed: The menu Copy Short ID(s) to Clipboard appears even when no short ID is available, leading to a crash if selected.
  • WG-48209 Fixed: The Project Explorer window can't be clicked on in some areas.
  • WG-48719 Fixed: Room Tone wet path occlusion is applied twice when listener is in another closed off room.
  • WG-48757 Fixed: Pressing the space bar does not trigger playback when the keyboard focus is on a check box inside a list.
  • WG-48798 Fixed: Property Editor's title bar does not reflect currently selected object.
  • WG-49197 Fixed: The folder path in the File Manager dialog is occasionally missing or misaligned.
  • WG-49720 Fixed: Property Editor keyboard shortcuts (CTRL+1, CTRL+2, etc.) to switch tabs are not working.
  • WG-49807 Fixed: Changing ShareSets in the Mastering Suite during playback produces audible artifacts.
  • WG-50027 Fixed: (WAAPI) The commands OpenContainingFolderWorkUnit, OpenContainingFolderWAV, and OpenContainingFolderSoundbank fail when executed from WAAPI.
  • WG-50155 Fixed: Crash when not setting any output parameter when overriding GetDialog in the Plug-in API 1.0 and 2.0.
  • WG-50227 Fixed: Unexpected slider dragging behavior on High DPI with multiple monitors.
  • WG-50337 Fixed: Meter display only works during a capture session for busses in the Master-Mixer Hierarchy.
  • WG-50432 Fixed: Mute and solo filtering doesn't work in the Game Sync Monitor when muting a game object.
  • WG-50668 Fixed: Some temporary files are not cleaned properly in Vorbis conversion.
  • WG-50702 Fixed: Wave Viewer not displayed well on a High DPI display.
  • WG-50906 Fixed: The game object scaling factor is applied twice when the game object is both the emitter and listener.
  • WG-51726 Fixed: The color selector disappears when it's near the edge of the screen.
  • WG-52515 Fixed: Issues with WAAPI asset synchronization when moving nested folders of Wwise objects.
  • WG-52517 Fixed: The All Properties tab does not update correctly when the platform is changed.
  • WG-52896 Fixed: Obstruction is applied to the output of an Auxiliary Bus used as an early reflections bus. This is undesirable because each reflection (image source) is evaluated individually in Spatial Audio, and each may or may not be individually obstructed.
  • WG-53142 Fixed: AkMemSettings::uMemAllocationSizeLimit can be exceeded with device memory.

Fixes for Community-Reported Bugs

  • WG-47156 Fixed: Deadlock on prepare request.
  • WG-48504 Fixed: Some Wwise threads don't call AK::MemoryMgr::InitForThread when started.
  • WG-49195 Fixed: Possible crash when executing pre or post generation steps during SoundBank generation.
  • WG-51912 Fixed: The severity of Audio File Conversion errors cannot be changed.
  • WG-52754 Fixed: Possible crash in Sound Engine, AkTransitionManager::ProcessTransitionList.
  • WG-52764 Fixed: Possible crash when using the main menu.
  • WG-53081 Fixed: Unknown Game Object ID reported when ending Unreal game with Portal closed.
  • WG-53325 Fixed: Custom attachment mixer plug-in GUI is incorrectly sized.


See also

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