Making Immersive Audio Easy and Consistent for Every Player
Spatial audio can be a game-changer, but only if it’s integral to the creative process and can be reliably delivered to the player. For developers and sound designers in gaming and XR, it is the key to crafting truly immersive and engaging experiences, especially if we are talking 3D worlds – then it also needs to be 3D sound for consistency. Players, in turn, expect to be enveloped by sound that doesn’t just build atmosphere but also provides critical gameplay cues and draws them into the scenery. But, let’s be honest, the journey from a well-designed 3D soundscape of sound objects to the player’s ears can be a bumpy one. The ecosystem of game engines, middleware, and plugins has become fragmented, with many companies releasing tools primarily for their own platforms or hardware.
This often means different binaural engines and workflows, leading to two major headaches:
- Delivering a consistent audio experience for players across all release platforms feels nearly impossible.
- During production, sound designers often find themselves juggling different mixes and setups for various platforms and output formats (headphones, multi-channel speaker setups).
Achieving consistently high-quality spatial sound across this landscape has been a complex, time-consuming challenge. UP UNTIL NOW.
We at atmoky are thrilled to introduce trueSpatial for Wwise, which is engineered to directly address these pain points. And it’s more than a set of authoring tools; it is the actual runtime code; the DSP and processing unit, that you ship with your game.
This means:
- It brings high-quality audio object rendering to all platforms, even those without native spatial audio endpoints.
- It can conveniently replace any native or third-party spatial audio endpoint in terms of rendering quality (like Windows Sonic or Dolby Access), often exceeding them.
- Crucially, it delivers the same rendering result and audio quality no matter the platform or playback device. Whether your players are on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, visionOS, Android, PlayStation, Xbox, or Switch, they get the experience you designed.
- And the best part for your players? This incredible spatial audio works right out-of-the-box. No need for them to be audio experts, install extra software, or fiddle with hidden OS settings.
Why Should You, the Creator, Care About trueSpatial for Wwise?
Our goal is simple: make spatial audio intuitive for you to implement and reliably superb for your players to experience. Here’s how trueSpatial helps:
- One Mix, All Platforms, Effortlessly: Imagine setting up your spatial mix once in Wwise and having it sound consistent across all your target platforms and devices (including headphones, multi-channel setups, Quest 2/3, Pico, AVP). That’s a potential huge time-saver in production and QA.
- Predictable, Consistent Audio for Everyone: What you hear in your Wwise project using trueSpatial is what your players hear. No more guessing how different spatializers will color or change your mix.
- Best-in-Class Perceptual Quality: We’ve focused on achieving true realism: stable sound imaging, pinpoint localization accuracy, and no unnecessary sound coloration. Our technology is grounded in psychoacoustic research to deliver a natural and immersive experience. (Part of our academic research: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=R-KR7yUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao)
- Tested, Maintained, and Supported: trueSpatial is an actively developed product from a team of audio experts. We’re here for troubleshooting and guidance.
- More Time for Creativity: Less technical hustle wrestling with platform quirks means more time to focus on what truly matters – designing incredible soundscapes.
"The Goal: Spatial audio should be intuitive to implement and reliable in its output, no matter the platform or device."
Dissecting the trueSpatial for Wwise Toolkit: Plugins & Workflow
Our trueSpatial suite for Wwise provides a cohesive set of plugins designed to give you granular control while ensuring consistent, high-fidelity output. You can find detailed documentation and examples on our atmoky Developer Hub for trueSpatial Wwise.
The package includes two primary plugin types:
1. atmoky ObjectRenderer (with integrated Metadata Control) This is our powerhouse for rendering numerous Wwise Audio Objects (these can be mono/stereo audio with 3D position data, or even multi-channel audio beds without positional updates). It’s all done performantly in software, meaning no need for players to pre-install system endpoints or buy specific hardware. It also has no pre-defined hard limit on the number of audio objects it can handle.
- Wwise Workflow: You’ll typically insert our atmoky ObjectRenderer as an effect plugin on an Audio Bus in Wwise (ensure this bus is configured for “Audio Objects”). All your dynamic 3D sounds meant for trueSpatial rendering are routed here.
- Integrated Metadata Control: The atmoky ObjectRenderer works directly with our metadata features. While it has smart defaults, you get fine-grained control over individual object parameters like Source Directivity, Near-Field Effects, Stereo Width, and LFE Gain. These are integral to the renderer, allowing you to tailor how each object is spatialized.
- Output Flexibility: It supports all state-of-the-art output formats – binaural (for an exceptional out-of-the-box headphone experience), stereo, multi-channel loudspeaker setups (e.g., 7.1.4), and up to 5th order Ambisonics (ready for your own decoder). This allows players to seamlessly switch between headphones and speakers, with trueSpatial adapting the rendering.
- Bypassing System Interference: We ensure that audio processed by our ObjectRenderer is what the player hears. If you also use Wwise’s native “System Audio Objects” (routed to the Master Audio Bus), sounds sent to the atmoky ObjectRenderer bus are handled independently by our engine. For clarity, we recommend disabling Wwise’s “Allow System Audio Objects” in Authoring Preferences when trueSpatial is your main spatializer.
For more on the fundamentals of Wwise Audio Objects, you can refer to Audiokinetic’s documentation (e.g., on Understanding Objects in Wwise).
2. atmoky Renderer This plugin is your versatile solution for everything that isn’t an individual dynamic audio object, or if you prefer a more traditional bus-based mixing approach. It can also function as a powerful master output renderer (akin to our “atmoky Ears” technology), ensuring the entire mix is cohesively spatialized for the chosen output format.
- Wwise Workflow: Place it on your Main Mix (Master Audio Bus) or on auxiliary busses to process channel-based beds, Ambisonic soundfields, or entire submixes. Its key role on the master output is enabling seamless output switching for the player between headphones and speakers, with our engine intelligently adapting the rendering without requiring player intervention in OS settings.
Spotlight on Key Features
- Output Format (both): Easily select whether you want to output for binaural, stereo, various multi-speaker setups, or Ambisonics.
- Externalizer (both but for binaural only): Our “Externalizer” unit is designed to give users that crucial “out-of-head” experience, which we encourage using, especially when not employing extensive additional spatial reverb.
- Audio Object Allocation (ObjectRenderer only): You can pre-allocate objects to optimize runtime performance. The UI stats provide a real-time view of active objects and beds.
- Detailed Parameters (ObjectRenderer + MetaData Plugins only): Control Near-field Effects, LFE Gain, Stereo Width, and World Scale to precisely sculpt your soundscape.
Why Our Features and Spatial Quality Matter
Delivering a great spatial mix is about more than just placing a sound to the left or right. It’s about crafting a believable acoustic reality for the player. Here’s why the specific features in trueSpatial are relevant for achieving that goal:
- For Pinpoint Accuracy and Tactical Advantage: The core function of our Object Renderer is to provide pinpoint localization accuracy. For a player, this means the difference between hearing an enemy’s footstep vaguely “somewhere to the left” versus knowing it’s precisely behind that specific crate. This level of directional precision, built on our perceptually-optimized engine, directly enhances gameplay and spatial awareness.
- For Believable Immersion: The “in-head” feeling of most headphone audio is a major immersion breaker. Our Externalizer feature is designed specifically to combat this, pushing the soundscape “out-of-head” to create a natural, externalized audio environment. This, combined with our Near-Field Effects that add intimacy and realism to up-close sounds, helps suspend disbelief and solidify the player’s sense of presence in the game world.
- For Creating a Dynamic, Living World: A game world isn’t static, and neither should its audio. Our controls for Source Directivity mean a character’s voice can sound focused and clear when they face you, but naturally muffle as they turn away. When combined with game-driven Occlusion (done by Wwise), these features ensure the soundscape reacts believably to the environment, making the world feel more dynamic, responsive, and real.
- For a Flawless Out-of-the-Box Experience: Ultimately, all these features work together to provide a superior experience that requires zero effort from the player. They don’t need to know what an HRTF is or which OS setting to enable. They simply put on their headphones and are immediately enveloped in the consistent, high-quality audio world you designed.
Getting Started with atmoky trueSpatial in Wwise
We’ve aimed to make the onboarding process as smooth as possible. The primary resource for all documentation, plugin downloads, and examples is our Developer Hub. You can easily download the trueSpatial plugin suite from the hub and use our trial licenses to test the technology with our provided Wwise project examples.
Our team is ready to provide support and help you integrate trueSpatial to achieve the best possible audio for your project. For commercial licensing, please see our products page or get in touch.
In Summary: Why atmoky trueSpatial for Your Wwise Project?
- It delivers spatial audio that feels truly real with pinpoint accuracy.
- It gives you the same high-quality audio experience on every supported platform.
- It provides a great, hassle-free user experience for your players.
- It can save significant time during production and testing.
trueSpatial for Wwise is designed as a virtual audio endpoint for rendering more than 256 dynamic audio objects and audio beds, all processed with our signature perceptual optimization, ensuring your game sounds incredible, consistently.
Conclusion: Your Sound, Heard Faithfully, by Everyone
The ambition for game audio is to craft unforgettable, deeply immersive experiences. The persistent challenge has been ensuring this creative vision is delivered intact to every player, without the inconsistencies of varied system-level solutions.
With atmoky trueSpatial for Wwise, we provide a direct and powerful solution. By enabling you to take full control of the rendering pipeline within Wwise, prioritizing perceptual realism, and ensuring a seamless, high-quality out-of-the-box experience, we empower you to deliver the full impact of your spatial audio design. The future of game audio is not just about creating spatial sound; it’s about delivering it consistently, under your control, for every player.
Appendix: A Look at the Spatial Audio Landscape for Wwise
Choosing a spatial audio solution involves understanding the different approaches. Here’s a brief overview of the landscape and where atmoky trueSpatial offers a uniquely powerful and consistent alternative.
Part 1: Common OS-Level Spatial Audio Endpoints
These are renderers built into the operating system. When using Wwise’s “System Audio Objects” feature, the game passes sound objects to the OS, which then performs the final rendering.
- Microsoft Spatial Sound (Windows Sonic / Dolby Access / DTS Sound Unbound)
- Sony Tempest 3D AudioTech
- Android Spatial Audio
The core problem with OS endpoints is their lack of cross-platform consistency. They force developers into a corner: either accept that the audio experience will be different and unpredictable for players on different systems, or manage multiple, platform-specific mixing and QA workflows.
Part 2: Alternative Third-Party Plugins for Wwise
These solutions, like ours, provide their own renderers that operate within Wwise.
- Valve Steam Audio (no stable Wwise plugin)
- Meta XR Audio SDK (formerly Oculus Spatializer, not cross-platform)
- Google Resonance Audio (not updated anymore, no support for Audio Objects)
- Dear Reality dearVR (only for Unity and now deprecated)
- Auro3D
In summary, while other solutions exist, they are often platform-specific, lack active Wwise support, or focus on different parts of the audio chain. atmoky trueSpatial is built to solve the core problem of cross-platform consistency by providing a single, high-quality, actively supported rendering engine for all your Wwise projects.