Realistinc reverb attenuation - D/R ratio

Development Audio
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Hi.

I work in a university in the UK teaching audio production. I recently picked up a module on Games Audio which is fascinating to teach, but brings with it some significant chanllenges in terms of workflow translation from my usual tools (Logic, MaxMSP, ProTools, Fairlight, Digital Performer, etc).

One of the things I’m finding very challenging is when I’m trying to design “real” sounding acoustic spaces that behave properly:

For example, having multiple sound sources in one large reverberant space (imagine a large cathedral). I need the reverberant energy of all sounds to remain “reasonably” constant at all points in the space (once eneegy has built to its natural sustained point) as would happen in a real situation, whilst the direct sound should fall according to a modified inverse square law (allowing for floor reflections, etc). The “natural sound” attenuation curve is a good approximation to this attenuation of the direct portion.
However, it seems that the default setup with attenuation(reverb) does not implement this - rather the reverb falls off almost as quickly as the direct falloff. This is all a matter of D/R ratio.

At close proximity to the sound source the ratio between Direct (D) energy and reverberent (R) energy would be very much in favour of the direct sound, whereas at greater distances it would be move to being in favour of the reverberent energy - ultimately to the point where the direct element is almost at -ve infinity dB (0 amplitude).

This can, I guess, be put into an attenuation preset and applied to all sound assets (be they cues or other).

However, Is there a clean efficient and “sound-engineer” friendly way of doing this using an audio bussing model - the equivalent of pre-fade (pre-attenuation?) sends onto the reverb bus associated with an Audio GamePlay volume - reverb component - for that space (cathedral)?

I’m reletaively new to UE5 and strugling to find some of these answers.

It would be great to have a truer representation of the audio signal flow and any hierarchical bussaing architecture. Is this available anywhere in the engine - as I can;t find it?

I thus find the audio routing system quite confusing and unintuitive - and I fear this maybe because I’m mixing up functionality of legacy and new features? If this is the cas then is there a way to only use new features and disable all legacy features to simnplify the process for new adopters?

Any clues or links to graphical representation of the signal routing would be great.

Maany thanks…

B.

1 Like
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I would suggest looking into meta sounds

Brian Michael Fuller’s YouTube channel goes pretty in depth with the newer audio system in Unreal Engine.

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Thanks @3dRaven. I’ve been in touch with Brian not long ago, but it was just before a major games dev event so he was rather busy - I’ll perhaps contact him again and see whether he can indeed shed some light ion this small issue.

Cheers, B.

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To achieve realistic acoustic spaces like cathedrals in UE5:

  1. Audio Bussing for Reverb: Set up a reverb bus with a tailored reverb effect and use pre-fade sends from your sound sources to this bus to control the D/R ratio independently.
  2. Attenuation Presets: Customize attenuation curves in the UE5 Attenuation settings to match natural falloff for direct and reverberant sound.
  3. Simplifying Routing: Disable legacy audio in Project Settings > Audio to focus on the newer audio system. Use the Sound Cue Editor for complex routing and sends.
  4. Resources: Check UE5 documentation, YouTube tutorials, and the Unreal Engine forums for guides on audio routing and busing.

By following these steps, you can create a more accurate representation of audio behavior in large spaces.