Using mic input as a trigger?

Question

Hi all,

I would like to use Wwise for a 'sound installation' project at my university. I would like to use a microphone input to trigger other sounds. It should start playing (more and more) files based on how loud the input is and how long a certain threshold has been surpassed (like a gate basically)

Is this at all possible? I'm new to Wwise and any help would very much appreciated.
 

Regards,

Arūnas

Answer 1

Hey Arūnas, 

Yes it is certainly possible :) 

What engine would you be hooking Wwise up to? If you are using Unity, you could check out the Wwise Adventure Game's AkMicrophone.cs script. You can use that script to get you started off quickly. I would just modify the code to Posting the desired Event and then create some of the logic (like how long a certain threshold has been surpassed) i a Unity script. 

Hope this helps! :) 

 

Comments

Hi, thanks for your swift reply! I was hoping to run Wwise standalone actually.

I'll elaborate a bit on what I want to do exactly:
My project is about debating, arguing, social media and people in general that refuse to listen. Nowadays it's quite common to 'win' an argument by speaking louder, or making more noise than the other person. I'd like to represent this.


I want to place a microphone in a room. When you 'speak' to it in a normal tone, it shall remain quiet and 'listen' to you. If you're very loud trying to make your point, the installation will start making more and more noise (by playing audio files/events) to drown out what you are saying.

So I prefer not using any engines if possible :)

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Sounds like a cool project!

Alright now I get it. Yes that is definitely possible with Wwise alone, but I'm not sure how the result will be if you want to have it "trigger" the sound, like playing from the beginning. Here's what I'd do.
1) Create a Sound SFX (let's call it - 'SFX 1') in the AM Hierarchy.
2) Add the Wwise Audio Input.
3) Make a new Audio Bus in the MM Hierarchy and add a Meter Effect to it.
4) Connect that Meter to a new RTPC.
* maybe add slew rate to the RTPC as well.
5) Make the same RTPC control the volume of the 'other' sound you want to play (let's call it - 'SFX 2').
6) Add both SFX 1 and SFX 2 to the soundcaster, and press play on both.
This should hopefully, make the microphone input level control how much you'll hear of the  'other' sound. However, you'll probably need a more length one or looping so it won't stop at some point.
Now if you want it to "Trigger", so like start from the beginning every time, you could set it to use virtual voice and then set the virtual voice to start from beginning.

Hope this helps!

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Wow thank you so much, this is a great start to this project! The way you described here is similar to the experiments I ran in a DAW. I was manually handling a couple of VCA's to see what it would be like. I've got this working in Wwise now and am iterating on this.
I'm currently using some voice clips and I really enjoyed how everytime I spoke, it would fling a random sentence at me and then dissapear.

Currently I am clicking the play button on all the SFX files I added to the soundcaster. These files are quite lengthy and I'm thinking of cutting up the different sentences into shorter ones. Is it possible for the soundcaster to randomly turn a just played SFX off and turn another one on? This way it would become non-linear which is something that I think will work very well with this. It would make it more interesting and less repetitive!

I'm thinking of creating a playlist that will go through these files in the IM Hierarchy, would that be the suggested approach for such a thing?