New Audio Engine: Early Access Quick-Start Guide

[magicxtian]

Hi!

Not sure where to post this, but I'm having trouble getting media sources to play in 4.16 with the new audio engine enabled. In my particular case, I have a .mp4 video file with audio. The video plays fine, but the audio doesn't play. This is fixed if I disable the new audio engine. Any ideas on how I might work around this? I thought about just playing the separating the sound file as a .wav and playing that at the same time as the video, but if there's something simple I'm overlooking let me know

[Hevedy]

Got a question here, is finally possible calibrate the audio and set more gain in the left or right side for speakers ?

[Tomavatars]

Thanks Dan for the explanations.
I will then wait for a new UE4 version to play with the new audio engine on Mac.

[dan.reynolds]

Seems to be the sound card problem. First I forgot to add the MacEngne.ini in a Mac folder. When I done this, no sound came from UE4. So now, I don't know how to add my sound card to the MacEngine.ini line. I tried :
[Audio]
AudioDeviceModuleName=MotuUltraliteMk3Hybrid

And

[Audio]
AudioDeviceModuleName=AudioMixerMotuUltraliteMk3Hybrid

Didn't worked.

I also tried :

[Audio]
AudioDeviceModuleName=CoreAudio

It worked but I had the glitches.

Finally I found this thread : https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...rk-on-Macs-yet
So the problem seems to be that the engine uses the default playback device so it won't play on my sound card.

Hi Tomavatars,

[Audio]
AudioDeviceModuleName=

The AudioDeviceModule is the module Epic has built to allow Unreal to interact with your Operating System's audio device. This is not a reference to your audio device. This configuration parameter tells Unreal which module to load (by name) so that Unreal can interact with your Operating System's audio device.

AudioDeviceModuleName=CoreAudio would tell Unreal to load the original (old audio engine) implementation of CoreAudio which is the Mac OSX's audio device architecture.
AudioDeviceModuleName=AudioMixerCoreAudio is an alternative module which loads the new audio engine. However, we are still smoothing out the implementations. We have several platforms for which we must build these modules and we hope to get as many of these done as quickly as possible (work is ongoing). For 4.16, we only had time to actually test Windows/PC, so we welcome any feedback you might have on this still experimental system.

Thanks!

[Tomavatars]

Seems to be the sound card problem. First I forgot to add the MacEngne.ini in a Mac folder. When I done this, no sound came from UE4. So now, I don't know how to add my sound card to the MacEngine.ini line. I tried :
[Audio]
AudioDeviceModuleName=MotuUltraliteMk3Hybrid

And

[Audio]
AudioDeviceModuleName=AudioMixerMotuUltraliteMk3Hybrid

Didn't worked.

I also tried :

[Audio]
AudioDeviceModuleName=CoreAudio

It worked but I had the glitches.

Finally I found this thread : https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...rk-on-Macs-yet
So the problem seems to be that the engine uses the default playback device so it won't play on my sound card.

[Tomavatars]

I've experienced those noises when I was using the synth and accidentally forgot to enable the new audio engine - I wasnt expecting it to work at all with the old audio system but it did, and had exactly the symptoms you describe. Are you sure you have the new audio engine enabled?

Hey! Thanks for your answer.
Actually I'm on mac so I followed PirateTony explanation to enable the new audio Engine. Perhaps I should point out my sound card here instead of coreaudio? I don't know how to do it actually :/

[Audio]
AudioDeviceModuleName=AudioMixerCoreAudio

[Motanum]

****! I just upgraded to 4.16, and it seems like this will be great for my game. IO could just create the notes for my game with the synthesizer, rather than using an external program to save all 71 notes separately, plus who knows what other changes in timbre I'd like to add. I will be definitely be looking at all of this more slowly next week!

Thanks for the amazing new features and write ups!

[SteveElbows]

Hey there!

Dan, I am currently testing this awesome new audio engine.
I meet a few problems and I wonder where it comes from.

First, occasionally, when I play in editor, you can hear some distortions. It happens two times at the beginning of the video. When it happens, I have to stop playing.
Then, I made a generative sequencer in blueprints, and I use the modular synth. You can hear that sometimes (when chords are played) there is I think a cpu overload or something like this as we can hear glitches.
Am I doing something wrong or the synth is simply too powerful for my system?
Specs : 3,41 GHz Intel Core i7 / 16 Go 2400 MHz DDR4 / graphic : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 2047 Mo / Sound card : Motu Ultralite MK3 - sample rate at 48khz

Here is a video :

https://youtu.be/K4tZgTkXAhA

I've experienced those noises when I was using the synth and accidentally forgot to enable the new audio engine - I wasnt expecting it to work at all with the old audio system but it did, and had exactly the symptoms you describe. Are you sure you have the new audio engine enabled?

[Tomavatars]

Hey there!

Dan, I am currently testing this awesome new audio engine.
I meet a few problems and I wonder where it comes from.

First, occasionally, when I play in editor, you can hear some distortions. It happens two times at the beginning of the video. When it happens, I have to stop playing.
Then, I made a generative sequencer in blueprints, and I use the modular synth. You can hear that sometimes (when chords are played) there is I think a cpu overload or something like this as we can hear glitches.
Am I doing something wrong or the synth is simply too powerful for my system?
Specs : 3,41 GHz Intel Core i7 / 16 Go 2400 MHz DDR4 / graphic : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 2047 Mo / Sound card : Motu Ultralite MK3 - sample rate at 48khz

Here is a video :

https://youtu.be/K4tZgTkXAhA

[Ashton_Audio]

Awesome thanks mate

[dan.reynolds]

Thanks Dan. This is really useful to know.

So you recommend using SCs for things like random containers and modulators, but most things can be done easier in BP?

At the moment, setting up Arrays of SoundWaves is a bit fiddly (in my opinion, at least), so I think it's still has some use--but BPs are way more powerful and more than that, they allow you to more smoothly interact with all the other systems in the game and allows audio cats to sync up better with Designers and Artists (who are already knee deep in BPs).

More dumb questions:

-do both oscillators have to be routed through the filter?
-Can you have multiple mod synth components on one BP?

The Modular Synthesizer Aaron built is similar to the OB-8 or Juno 106 era performance synths in that there is an Oscillator/Voice section and that gets summed out into the Filter and then the Amplifier, your standard:

VCO => VCF => VCA

If you're comfortable in code, however, you can just make your own synth component--the libraries are all there with more to come for sure!

You can have as many mod synth components as your processor can handle and no more. They aren't cheap, but a BP Actor can have several. I made a Drum synth for GDC that had 12 Synth Components.

and similarly, patching LFO to gain of one oscillator instead of the gain of the whole patch?

In this case, you don't want to use the default patch destinations for the LFO, you want to set up a custom Patch. The Modular Patch section at the end of the Preset is a custom array of Modulation Sources to one or more Modulation Destinations--it is there that you can set a specific Osc Gain as a Modulation Destination.



See the ADVANCED MODULAR PATCH ASSIGNMENTS section.

[Ashton_Audio]

and similarly, patching LFO to gain of one oscillator instead of the gain of the whole patch?

[Ashton_Audio]

More dumb questions:

-do both oscillators have to be routed through the filter?
-Can you have multiple mod synth components on one BP?

[Ashton_Audio]

Thanks Dan. This is really useful to know.

So you recommend using SCs for things like random containers and modulators, but most things can be done easier in BP?

[dan.reynolds]

Hi Dan.
Sorry if this is a stupid question. Can the synths only in a BP or is there/will there be a way to use the synths in Sound Cues?
Key parts of the implementation systems in our game have been set up with data assets with exposed variables to insert sound cues. I would really like to start using some procedural aspects with the modular synth, would I be able to do that or would I need to have the data assets trigger custom events and use those in a synth BP or something?

Also in the now famous presentation you guys did about the new system, the synth had a nice and friendly GUI to work with, is this in there somewhere and I'm missing it?

Thanks

Ashton

Hey Ashton,

The synths are components, not assets, so there aren't any ways to trigger them from within SoundCues right now and frankly, I'm not completely sure how that would be accomplished or what parameter control would even look like--parameter passing in SoundCues is extremely painful and SoundCues are so obfuscated from the rest of the game logic that my hearty recommendation is to use SoundCues sparingly and only for cases when similar logic would be less convenient in Blueprints--generally speaking, Blueprints are far superior in terms of logic and generally will perform better. SoundCues are very much a legacy system and the entire SoundCue graph is evaluated every tick, which in cases of complex SoundCue graphs is actually really terrible for performance (compared to the execution oriented BPs).

As for the GUI, we've considered trying to include it in a Content Example some time down the line, but it was just a runtime UMG interface I made for modulating synth parameters in real time. It had limitations because the Modular Synth is modular and the UMG widget wasn't. With that said, we are interested in exploring ways to edit preset data in the Editor and hope that we can improve interfacing with Audio assets, effects, synths, etc. overall--at the moment, Slate is something we'll need to learn more about to achieve this, so I don't know when we'll be able to get to it--but we want to do it, for sure!