in general which is best audio (sound) manager

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1

im creating this post cause the asset store search appears to not be working today and i’m stuck without it…

i dont want to code it cause that would be waste of time if you could affordably buy something that meets your needs. also its just more code to have to support.

buts its a tough choice since there are a number of packages, not all have free versions and one does not want to through out their hard earned money and guy the one that does not fit their needs.

so i’m shopping for a audio (sound) manager for my game and i’ve been doing as much research into it as i can, but i’m still stuck and i could use some advice, help in picking the package from members with experience in this area.

so far i’ve looked at

Audio Toolkit $65
Master Audio ($30 sale) $60
Wingrove Audio - Complete Audio Toolkit $45
Simple Audio Manager $15
SoundManagerPro Pro! $45 ($22.5 recent sale price)
-Easy Sound Manager $2
-Audio Source Controller $5
-Sound Manager $10

the ones with the negatives ive so far discounted cause of some reason, like it didn’t suite my needs, etc.

i really liked SoundManagerPro and almost bought it the other day when it was 50% off, but the more i looked into it, it sadly just didnt offer the granularity that i was looking for, too bad cause it would have been an amazing value.

what i am looking for is something that will let me have

master, music, sfx, voice, etc and allow me to individual control the volume on each.

also i would like to be able to assign different clips to each and control how they will be managed.

for example to music i would like to have different music for different scenes (levels) and perhaps for different situations and cross fade them in and out and raise and lower volume and pitch as as needed.

for sfx i would like to be able to have a list of sounds for example for jump and be able to control when they are played, how many are played at a time and the position of the sounds. cause it can be coming from model that is moving and similarly for voice.

So I guess I would need some builtin support for internal or 3rd party object pool and ability to preload a set number, have some max number and have some way to release excess over time or some other algorithm.

i also want to be able to be able to tweak pitch and if some sound has multiple different clips associated with it i would like to be able to pick the algorithm used to determine which one is played, like random or next, etc.

finally, if possible i would like to be able to setup and manage everything form within the editor and not have to do coding. the less i hardcode the easier it will be to manage. the last thing i need is to go all over the code making changes. so having editor extensions that do it all or most of it is important.

for example, there is sound when someone falls they get hurt, or when they are shot, or when a weapon is fired and for many many many other events and things. obviously u dont want to hard code it all. u want to do as much of it in the editor and let the manager do the work and generate and catch events and play the correct sounds as needed.

and yes i can code, but what is the point of having tons of code that you have to maintain… easier to be able to do it in some ui

if you have some experience with any of the above please share it with us

thanks in advance.

2

Hi, my company makes Master Audio and I wanted to address your question. I haven’t used the others except Audio Toolkit. I know that one in particular has a non-optimal workflow (nice way to say it). Sound Manager Pro is good but also really new, so it’s probably missing a couple things this early in the game. I haven’t used any of the others.

Master Audio does everything you want without coding 99% of the time. When you do need to write code, it’s usually 1 line, and a short line at that. Music is cross-faded automatically here and you can access the music clip settings with one line of code to tweak them. Actually, it does everything except this one: “have some way to release excess over time or some other algorithm”. I believe in guaranteeing the polyphony of each sound, so this isn’t a feature I think is desirable. The extra instances don’t take much CPU or resources anyway, they are clones and use the same Audio Source pointer.

There are also buses to control the volume of groups of sound at once. Built-in no-code music ducking is here as well, for whichever sounds you choose. Most of those on your list do not have this feature.

There is a dead simple Event-driven script that can trigger the majority of your sounds automatically, just a couple clicks to configure.

The sound fx “pooling” is here and is massively flexible without being confusing. Dark Tonic is always active on the forums and email for any support and we will add what you ask for within reason!

By all means, check the others out for curiosity’s sake. Master Audio definitely has the most intuitive workflow and tightest integration. I am biased for sure, but we are often complimented on the workflow and excellent Inspectors, so I’m repeating it here! Good luck, there are many good choices here!

P.S. If you let reviews speak for themselves, Master Audio is currently the highest rated asset in the entire Editor Extensions top-level category. When you sort by rating.

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hi and thank you for your amazingly quick response to my post and pm. as you can imagine i invited everyone to the party to help me out… :slight_smile:

as you can see master audio is high on my list. ive watched the videos and have gone over the tutorials for all the products. too bad no binary eval version that times out in lets say 15-30 days or at least some limited free version. perhaps its something you and others would contemplate doing in the future. i think every product should have those so devs can at least plug it in work with it get a sense for themselves and then buy the one they will use.

again thanks and i’ll be looking at it again and again until i pick one… (joy)

4

The more the merrier! I would like to hear from the other authors as well. Getting the low down is helpful!

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well im getting pm from them. i guess it my not be as public as you may have hoped for.

on the bright side killer waves is high on my list as well…

Spawner - Free $0
Spawner - Pro $20
++Killer Waves $40
+Spawn Controller $15
?Spawn Controller $20
DaW (Direct-a-Wave) $20

and i have a very big list of stuff i would like to buy, better to buy than to build if it meets your needs i always think like invisible workforce like yourself plugging away at it while i work on what i cannot buy. :wink:

6

Oh well. Perhaps people who have tried more than one of your choices in depth will speak up on this thread. Killer Waves you will like a lot I’m sure. Over half its features don’t exist in any other plugin.

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i did see in the screenshots how u r able with Master Audio set a sound and particle fx together which is very nice and lacking on other offerings. not to disparage them in any way, but often sound and fx go hand and hand. and the same for sound and events which all sort of all go together.

what concerned me is that like events looked a bit hard coded and i did not see how i have like more specific events like when player becomes invisible it may not mean he dies and so u dont want scream. im refering to like the video. he could have teleported or something. so i guess it would have to be setup based on collision with specific thing. but still the events looked hard coded and limited. is that something htat has changed. how can i handle with your product complex events and very specific events like player death, player hit by bullet vs baseball bat, etc.

also i was wondering i am doing different kind of game from your video tutorial. so i have multiplayer and i have fps/tps where players have different weapons and such and i need different sound to play when the different weapons is fired that is based on the weapon being fired and it has to be fired from specific location of where the player doing the firing is and whether someone hears it at all and how louds, etc is based on where each player is in relation to the player doing the firing of the weapon. i was wondering how could i do that with your product.

i guess the sound and fx would be on the specific bullet that when its fired from the position of the gun.

again, thanks in advance!

8

The particle thing was just something I made for visualization purposes, I don’t know if anyone uses it :slight_smile:

Yes, those events I provided are just the most common. It’s quite easy to add your own events to that script or even custom events that can be fired from code (1-2 lines). However, in a lot of cases that’s overkill because even not using the Event Script, triggering a sound is one line of code added to some script on your prefab. It doesn’t get much quicker to implement than that. But you still can configure the polyphony, variations, randomness etc from the Master Audio Inspectors.

Of course if you’d like to see new event types, I can easily add them.

9

Ha, I forgot, since I haven’t used it for awhile. One of the events in EventScript.cs is for Collisions and Triggers. They both have Layer and Tag filters you can use to limit which types of Collisions and Triggers cause the sound to play. Very useful! Screenshot of that here.

1325025--63217--$layerTagFilter.PNG
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Killer Waves has used this type of thing as well to great effect.

About the 3-d-ness of weapons firing, yes Master Audio automatically “plays” the sound from the location of the prefab that triggers it, although this can be turned off per prefab. Doppler settings work of course to make it quieter or louder if the other player’s Audio Listener is further away. Typically with a game like you describe, the Audio Listener would be placed in the player’s avatar’s head so that would work well. Sounds like a cool game already :slight_smile:

10

thanks again!

is there some place i can find a full api

i went to website, but all i saw was like user manual. i mean reference manual. is that one public.

that way i could learn what layer/tag filters, etc and other stuff is. so far i only have video which ive watched a number of times. a bit short, the 1st one talks about some stuff and appears to be outdated for other things and the second one talks about the new changes so u have to like merge the two videos in your mind. and i also have the documentation you posted in your website and like the screenshots from the store page

i guess at some point you all want to do a fuller video that is up to date and release full api, since there is no trail version or lite version like there is for killer waves. so access to api would be nice…

again thanks in advance!

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ok been there already. i guess im more used to a different format. that ot me looks more like user manual. i was looking for more like javadocs or .net api reference where i can go through through pages, classes, members, ect and click around and it takes me to it. no problem i search for event, trigger, filter, ect and see what i come up with :slight_smile:

ok so i just noticed for like vehicles it cant be used cause the sound needs to move :wink:

i wonder that would apply to someone like zombie running and screaming cause the screaming loop would have to move with the zombie as well.

has that issue / limitation been resolved or am i misunderstanding it.

why cant master audio spawn the sound and attach it to the source. for example the vehicle or player or in the case zombie, etc that is moving around?

i guess i dont understand why the limit, other than the code still needs to be written.

13

edit: Master Audio now allows sounds to attach to objects.

14

again thank u

i did figure layers and tags, i had to have the editor running and it was right there above Inspector. please understand im very new to unity3d. so a lot of the questions are just those coming from a newbie. so as such there is no need to ad anything to your list of things to figure out. cause most likely its just me being a newbie and not understanding it and not something worthy of being added to any list other than the list of things i have to learn :wink:

15

Not a problem. I recommend the 3dbuzz.com free Unity tutorials, they are killer, very fun and how I started learning Unity! Hey, I was a newbie not even 2 years ago, you’ll be a pro in no time! These forums are great for learning as well. I’ve had many things that stumped me answered by forumites.

Still, it’s a worthwhile thing for me to investigate (attaching the Audio Source to the prefab).

16

i went through all the unity3d tutorials and demos in july. and the free complete projects that have video or pdf tutorials

and i just started

www.gamertogamedeveloper.com videos which are great

and i started to go through api a-z, im a programmer so its no sweat to go through apis, i actually learn better that way cause of all too many years as programmer.

i also doing

wiki.unity3d.com for learning shaders, best way for me is to study the existing code and develop variants.

and tutorials at

tornadotwins.com

and now ill add 3dbuzz.com

the more the merrier

17

Awesome im, thanks for the info. I’ll pass this on to the newer guys on my team!

18

I only can speak for AudioToolkit and SoundManagerPro, and I have to say SoundManagerPro fits my needs perfectly. AudioToolkit does, too, but personally I like the Interface of SoundManagerPro much more. Additionally it grants support for NGUI, 2DToolkit AND PlayMaker.

Of course it’s also about personal preferences, but no second I regret buying this great asset, and I bought it at Full-Price, not sale :wink:

19

Hi,

Can I also suggest Fabric audio toolset… I know its no longer available on the asset store but it was the first audio plugin released for Unity and has been licensed by a number of big game developers used in many high profile games.

It will do everything you asked for sure… You can find more details about it on the website: www.tazman-audio.co.uk

Most of its features are similar to the ones you find in big audio middleware solutions:

  • Event based system with editor support
  • Comes with a number of components each providing different ways of handling audio (Random, Sequence, Switch, Timeline, Group, Blend, IntroLoopOutro)
  • Components can be combined in a hierarchical structure allowing the creation of complex behaviours
  • Component instancing with different stealing modes (i.e oldest, newest, furthest)
  • Component preview in the editor
  • Audio source pooling
  • Mixer view with solo/mute support
  • Dynamic mixer capable of changing the game audio levels at runtime by adding/removing snapshots.
  • Runtime parameter support on component properties
  • Side chain effect (ducking)
  • Add DSP effects anywhere in the hierarchy
  • Event log and graph view
  • Asset loading/unloading
  • Modular synth
  • Volume and loudness metering
    … and many more

I am happy to give access to a Dropbox folder that has a fully functional evaluation copy… just drop me an email at: sales@tazman-audio.co.uk

Thanks,
Taz

20

taz u have a very nice product, no doubt, sadly unless i misunderstood the licensing terms it’s way out of my league and i buy only stuff with source code cause im a programmer at heart that loves to tweak things.

still thanks for posting and i really liked how u did the custom events, i setup something similar for dealing with events between game objects, fits well with C# support for delegates and events and unity editor.

i wonder why others have chosen to just do hard coded list of events and not have a more open solution, as u can see i dont like to hard code things.