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Removing DC offsets

The DC offset represents the percentage away from zero amplitude that a signal lies. Because it can be problematic for sounds, the DC offset could be removed. If you choose to maintain the offset, you should be aware of some of the undesirable effects in Wwise:

  • A normalized sound with a DC offset will not reach its highest volume during audio processing because the offset consumes the headroom. This problem can extend to the mix as a whole because mixing two sounds where one is with a DC offset and the other is not, will cause the them both to have a DC offset.

  • Any signals with recursive DSP algorithms applied are likely to be very sensitive to audio files with DC offsets and this will cause artifacts. This is especially the case for reverb plug-ins, as well as Environmental FX plug-ins.

[Caution]Caution

We recommend not removing the DC offset for looping sounds. The remove mechanism is a high-pass filter, so there is no guarantee that it will modify the first and last sample of the loop in the same way because it does not know they will play contiguously. This could create a discontinuity in the signal, which is audible as a click.

To avoid unoptimized performance issues, the DC offset is not removed at run-time. Consequently, it is recommended to remove the DC offset before importing the files into Wwise, which can be done using a DC offset removal filter (available in most audio authoring tools) or during the conversion process in Wwise (in the Conversion Settings window).


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