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Property Editor: Sound SFX and Sound Voice

The Property Editor contains the properties and behavior options for the selected sound object (an SFX or a Voice). Object properties, such as pitch and volume, determine how the audio sounds in-game. Object behaviors, such as looping and streaming, determine how sounds are played at any given point in the game.

The General properties include relative properties, such as volume and pitch, as well as behaviors. See About properties in the project hierarchy to understand the difference between relative and absolute properties.

For a description of the MIDI and Advanced properties, refer to Common tabs and categories: Actor-Mixer Hierarchy objects.

Refer to Understanding the voice pipeline to learn about how voices are being processed, how they are being routed and where the different volumes and Effects are being applied.

General

Interface Element

Description

[name]

The name of the object.

(Object Color)

Displays the object's color. Clicking the icon opens the color selector.

Select a color to apply it to the object. When you choose a color for an object, a palette icon appears on the selected square, as well as a yellow triangle in the lower-right corner, as shown.

To inherit the parent object's color, select the square at the far left of the color selector.

(Mute and Solo)

Controls the Mute and Solo states for the object and shows the implicit mute and solo states for the object.

Muting an object silences this object for the current monitoring session. Soloing an object silences all the other objects in the project except this one.

A bold M or S indicates that the Mute or Solo state has been explicitly set for the object. A non-bold M or S with faded color indicates that the object's Mute or Solo state was implicitly set from another object's state.

Muting an object implicitly mutes the descendant objects.

Soloing an object implicitly mutes the sibling objects and implicitly solos the descendant and ancestor objects.

[Tip]Tip

Hold the Ctrl key while clicking a solo button to exclusively solo the object for which the solo button is associated.

[Note]Note

Mute and Solo are designed to be used for monitoring purposes only and are not persisted in the project or stored in the SoundBanks.

(Show references)

Indicates the number of elements in your project that contain direct references to the object. The icon is displayed in orange when references to the object exist, and in gray when no references exist.

Selecting the button opens the Reference View with the object's name in the References to: field.

Enter text in the search field to find specific properties or property groups. Results are displayed as you type. The search is not case-sensitive and searches all properties associated with an object, even if their category is not selected for display.

When a search is active, an x appears at the far-right side of the field and all category buttons are unavailable. Click the x to clear the search.

(Only Show Modified)

When selected, only properties that have been modified from their default value are displayed and all category filter buttons are unavailable. If a search is active, it is only applied to modified properties.

Modified properties are displayed with an orange band at the left side of the property list and at the left side of the corresponding category button.

(Show/Hide Category Filters)

Opens a list of all categories associated with the object currently loaded in the Property Editor. For each category selected in the list, a corresponding button is displayed at the top of the list of properties. Select these buttons to display the related properties. Ctrl+click or Shift+click to select multiple buttons.

Always Show Additional Properties expands the less frequently used properties, which are collapsed by default.

(More Options)

Opens the following options:

  • Reset Expand/Collapse to Default: Returns to the default expansion.

  • Collapse All: Collapses all categories and groups in the Property Editor.

  • Expand All: Expands all categories and groups in the Property Editor.

(Open Property Editor Settings)

Opens the Object Property Settings dialog, which allows you to configure which properties are available for display in the Property Editor.

(Open in New Window)

Duplicates the Property Editor as a floating view. An instance of the editor remains in the Object Tab.

Sound

Interface element

Description

Specific

Initial Delay

Initial delay applied before playing. This delay will be added to parents and children Initial delay.

[Note]Note

This delay changes the behavior of a container in Trigger rate mode as the delay of its children will be applied additionally to the Trigger rate duration.

[Note]Note

The Source Editor’s Play Cursor start position is not respected when there is an Initial Delay. For more information, refer to the Source Editor documentation .

[Note]Note

Using the built-in parameters to control an RTPC can lead to problems if that RTPC is tied to Initial Delay or Priority. Built-in parameters are computed when a sound plays on a given game object, so they work great for most sound properties. Logical control of playback items like Initial Delay and Priority are not suited while using the built-in parameters to control an RTPC since their value is unknown at the moment the Play Action is posted.

Default value: 0

Range: 0 to 3600

Units: s

Stream

Stream

Enables controls that allow you to stream the audio played in game directly from game media.

Streamed media is not included into SoundBanks. It is the Wwise Stream Manager’s, and ultimately, the Low-Level I/O submodule’s responsibility to open and read them from disk at run-time. Refer to the Wwise SDK documentation for more details on Wwise I/O.

Streamed files are described in the file SoundBanksInfo.xml, which is created for each platform when SoundBanks are generated. Refer to Managing SoundBanks for more details.

[Note]Note

Within the Project Settings’ or the SoundBanks Settings’ SoundBanks tab, the Generate Metadata Files option should always be enabled. Additionally, you must enable the Generate XML Metadata option. With these set, Wwise generates the SoundbanksInfo.xml file whenever you successfully generate SoundBanks.

Default value: false

Is Non Cachable

Disables caching of this file, when caching is enabled in the streaming manager. This is useful to prevent long loops, or files that are played infrequently, from using up space in the streaming cache that could be better utilized by other sounds.

Default value: false

Zero Latency

Creates a small audio buffer consisting of the beginning portion of the audio file that covers the latency time required to fetch the rest of the file. This enables the entire streamed sound to be played back without delays.

Latency and prefetch settings are set per track. If you have more than one music source per track then the beginning portion of each source will need to be loaded into memory.

Default value: false

Prefetch length (ms)

The beginning portion of the sound, in milliseconds, that will be loaded into memory in order for the streamed sound to be played back with zero latency.

Default value: 100

Range: 0 to 10000

Units: ms

Loop

Loop

Enables controls that define the number of times the sound or defined loop region in the file will be played.

Some compressed audio file formats, such as ADPCM, require that loop markers lie on predetermined sample boundaries. To accommodate these requirements, you may have to convert your files again when using the Loop option

Default value: false

Infinite

Specifies that the sound or defined loop region in the file will be repeated indefinitely.

Default value: true

No. of loops

The number of times the sound or defined loop region in the file will be played.

Default value: 2

Range: 1 to 32767

General

Interface element

Description

Specific

Override Color

Enables the Color slider to change the color chip of the selected objects.

Default value: false

Color

Displays a square filled with either the object’s defined color, or if none is set, a randomly applied color. This key helps identify the object line displayed in the graph view.

Default value: 0

Range: 0 to 26

Inclusion

Determines whether the element is included in the SoundBanks when they are generated. When selected, the element is included. When unselected, the element is not included.

To optimize your sound design for each platform, you might want to exclude certain elements on certain platforms. By default, this check box applies across all platforms. Use the Link indicator to the left of the check box to unlink the element. Then you can customize the state of the check box per platform.

When this option is unselected, the property and behavior options in the editor become unavailable.

Default value: true

Voice

Voice Volume

The attenuation (level or amplitude) applied on the current object before it is routed to a bus or sent to an Auxiliary Bus. Refer to Understanding the Voice Pipeline for more information about volumes.

[Note]Note

The default slider range is from -96 to +12 dB. You can go over those limits by entering the value directly or by rolling the mouse while the focus is on the edit control.

Default value: 0

Range: -200 to 200

Units: dB

Voice Pitch

The playback speed of an audio structure, where:

  • Pitch 0 = Normal speed.

  • Pitch 1,200 = 2 x speed.

  • Pitch 2,400 = 4 x speed.

  • Pitch -1,200 = 0.5 speed

  • Pitch -2,400 = 0.25 speed

[Tip]Tip

1,200 cents is equivalent to one octave.

Default value: 0

Range: -2400 to 2400

Units: Cents

Voice Low-pass Filter

A recursive filter that attenuates high frequencies based on the value specified.

The units for this filter represent the percentage of low-pass filtering that has been applied, where 0 means no low-pass filtering (signal unaffected) and 100 means maximal attenuation.

For more detail, see Wwise LPF and HPF Value Cutoff Frequencies .

Default value: 0

Range: 0 to 100

Units: %

Voice High-pass Filter

A recursive filter that attenuates low frequencies based on the value specified.

The units for this filter represent the percentage of high-pass filtering that has been applied, where 0 means no high-pass filtering (signal unaffected) and 100 means maximal attenuation.

For more detail, see Wwise LPF and HPF Value Cutoff Frequencies .

Default value: 0

Range: 0 to 100

Units: %

Make-up Gain

Volume gain in decibels (dB) applied to the voice, after all other volume adjustments. The make-up gain is additive across the Actor-Mixer Hierarchy.

Refer to Understanding the voice pipeline to learn about how voices are being processed, how they are being routed and where the different volumes and Effects are being applied.

For more information about the Make-up Gain, refer to Using Loudness Normalization or Make-up gain to Adjust Volume .

[Note]Note

The default slider range is from -96 to +12. You can go over those limits by entering the value directly, or by rolling the mouse while the focus is on the edit control.

Default value: 0

Range: -96 to 96

Units: dB


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