WWise 2022 integration with Unreal 5 can't find my audio in the generated sound banks

Question

I'm working on a game in UE5 with some other people and I'm the team lead. One of the guys on my team had just made a bunch of audio files in WWise and they all look good, but Unreal isn't recognizing them in the editor. We're using WWise 2022.1.3.8179.2621 for this project and we're integrating them into an Unreal Engine 5.0.3 project. I've integrated the audio files in the Audiokinetic Launcher following the documentation, and all of the audio files show up in Unreal as expected. I can even play each audio file in the Waapi Picker window as normal. But when I drag those files into the editor itself, they don't play. Playing the files from the content browser or from a blueprint instead prints the following error:

LogAkAudio: Warning: Failed to post AkAudioEvent: Data for 'FireFly' wasn't found. Make sure the GeneratedSoundBanks folder (C:/Users/MY PATH/Working Files/Soundbank/Through the Woods/GeneratedSoundBanks/) exists and is properly set in the project settings.

I've gone into the Integration Settings tab in the project settings and set the "Generated Sound Banks Folder" to the correct folder (the exact one that is in the error message). I did the same in the User Settings tab by setting the Generated Sound Banks Folder User Override to that folder. I also set Auto Connect to WAAPI to true while I was there. None of these fixes worked. I've also generated the soundbank from Unreal countless times at this point and no errors are reported. That is, except for the files that I had pulled out of the Waapi Picker window and into Unreal. For each one of these sounds, Unreal prints the following message:

LogWwiseResourceCooker: Warning: GetEventCookedData (9DB36A1541004444A2A3F2530AF065A0 677099000 FireFly): No ref found

I've now created three new projects to try and isolate the issue. In one project, I tried seeing if integrating the WWise project into a brand new Unreal project would change anything. It didn't. In the other project, I tried integrating another WWise project into the Unreal project to see if that would change anything. It also didn't. And just in case it was an issue with the Launcher's integration, I created another project and installed the WWise Unreal Integration plugin as an Engine Plug-In following the documentation. I set up all the paths again, generated the soundbanks, and I got the exact same errors. I can't seem to get past them no matter what I do. I've gone into the GeneratedSoundBanks folder and have double and triple checked that all the files that should be there are there. And as far as I can tell, they are. I've deleted these files and regenerated them multiple times to ensure that they're all fresh but I still end up with the same errors.

I should mention that I have no experience with WWise or sound design whatsoever. I work primarily in Unreal and I've never done anything in WWise until now. But at this point I feel like I have a workable grasp of what's going on just because of all the different pages of documentation that I've had to sort through to figure out what's happening. But I can't figure it out. Does anyone here know of any other fixes I could try? And if other error/log messages would help, I can post them here too. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Comments

Our team is getting a very similar issue except in one of the minor versions before: 2022.1.0.8070.

Also, our issue only seems to happen in the build, not in the editor. 

When the events go to play, we get the errors you've mentioned above. 

LogAkAudio: Warning: Failed to post AkAudioEvent: Data for 'SFX_Event_Name_Play' wasn't found. Make sure the GeneratedSoundBanks folder (C:/Users/MY PATH/Working Files/Soundbank/WwiseProject/GeneratedSoundBanks/) exists and is properly set in the project settings.

Earlier in the loading of the level, we see a number of these errors and warnings for specific events:

LogLoad: Warning: Skipping loading missing WwiseFileHandler module: Not in game thread
LogWwiseResourceLoader: Error: Failed to retrieve SoundBank Manager
LogWwiseResourceLoader: Warning: LoadEventResources: Could not load SoundBank SFX_Event_Name_Play (1852790575) for Event SFX_Event_Name_Play (1852790575)
LogWwiseResourceLoader: Error: LoadEventResources: Could not load 1 prerequisites for Event SFX_Event_Name_Play (1852790575). Unloading and failing.
LogWwiseResourceLoader: Error: LoadEventAsync: Could not load Event SFX_Event_Name_Play (1852790575) in language SFX (0)
LogLoad: Warning: Skipping loading missing WwiseFileHandler module: Not in game thread

Similar to your issue, all the banks files are there. When cooking/building, there are no errors or warnings revealed by the logs that indicate there's an issue.
Not sure what or how this could be, but it seems to somehow be related to some confusion with where media or .wems are supposed to be located
As you can see in these few lines of errors, it seems to be looking for a .wav file

LogWwiseResourceLoader: Error: Failed to retrieve Media Manager
LogWwiseResourceLoader: Warning: LoadEventResources: Could not load Media Path\To\WavFile\SFX_WAVFILE_Name.wav (278909064) for Event SFX_OtherEvent_Name_Play (2637310674)
LogLoad: Warning: Skipping loading missing WwiseFileHandler module: Not in game thread
LogWwiseResourceLoader: Error: Failed to retrieve SoundBank Manager

But we've done nothing different in terms of the way that banks are being created relative to any other sound. It's all being done by the Auto-Defined SoundBanks. No .wave media is supposed to be loaded. I'm not sure why it would be thinking that there should be a .wav file.

All other sounds seem to work fine. It's just a certain set of sounds that seem to have this issue. I attempted to make new duplicates of the .wav files, reimported them, created new events, and imported to Unreal.

A few worked fine, but a good chunk of the other sounds don't play. Same errors/warnings.

Hopefully, they get back to you and I, and we can get this fixed! We don't really know what to do at this point to get our sounds to play.