Best practices for implementing an audio system

Development Audio
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1

Hi there,

I started looking into integrating an audio system into my game. I have zero experience with this, so I would like to ask a few questions so that I can get the basics straight before jumping into it.

  • What is the state of the art way of playing sounds into UE? It can be anything from a builtin UE system (that I couldn’t find) or a plugin. With “playing sounds” I mean having a common way of playing anything from sounds in 3D space, to footsteps, to music, that let’s me modify how those kind of sounds are mixed at runtime, and potentially even apply some filters to them if possible. I know about UGameplayStatics::PlaySound2D() and UGameplayStatics::PlaySoundAtLocation(), but it seems to me like I would need to create my own system to manage the mixing of the sounds I play with those APIs.
  • Now, taking into account that I don’t have much experience, I’m a solo developer and I don’t need anything incredibly fancy, what path should I take?
  • Are there any sources I should check to get started (I couldn’t find much official documentation beyond Audio Mixer)?
  • Are there any mistakes I should try to avoid so that I don’t shoot myself in the foot either now or later on?

Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:

2

There is not one system that does all audio. There are sounds that happen in the game world, and sounds that can happen independent of the game world, like the soundtrack in most games. How do you mix the two? I think the idea of diegetic music is pretty cool where the soundtracks plays from the world, but that doesn’t work for everything and it’s hassle.

Look at Metasounds. They are pretty cool.