Unity integration: Is there any reason not to use WWise and Unity's audio system simultaneously?

Question

We're trying out WWise to implement interactive music in a Unity 2017 game that already has audio implemented. By default, WWise integration disables Unity's sound system. Is there any reason WWise shouldn't be used in parallel with Unity's audio?

Answer 1

Hi Kevin,

You CAN use both Wwise and Unity sound engine simultaneously but I personally think that using both Wwise and Unity's sound engine can be very cumbersome at the end of the development where you need to optimize audio since you will need to profile Wwise and Unity separately.

If you have someone in your team who specifically remembers all of the work done in both Wwise and Unity audio thoroughly and if that person stays in your team nearly forever, then it might be worth trying. I'm not being sarcastic, I'm pretty serious here because it can cause critical issues regarding optimization and division of roles between a sound designer and a programmer especially if they don't work with any one of either Wwise or Unity.

But again, that's my personal opinion based on my preference.

- Narie

Comments

Thanks for the info Narie. I'm the sole programmer on this project-- it would certainly be simpler from my perspective to just use Unity's audio, but the composer has convinced me that it's at least worth experimenting with WWise for interactive music.

As for optimizations, the game is not yet in beta, but audio hasn't been much of a priority because it consumes a relatively small amount of resources compared to physics, scripts and rendering (under 3% of CPU in a stress test scene). Are we likely to see a big performance hit from WWise if we're only using it for music?