Meta XR Audio Plugin for Unreal Tutorial

This tutorial covers setting up an Unreal project to use the features of the Meta XR Audio Plugin.

Open Unreal Engine and on the New Project page click Games > First Person as the type to provide a template project to work with. Clear the Starter Content option. At the bottom of the screen, set the Project Location and Project Name. Click Create to create the new project from the First Person template.

Ensure you have set up your project according to the setup portion of the documentation. This will ensure the plugin is installed and ready to use.

In this demo, there will be one source, so navigate to the Content Browser, right-click and then select Audio > Sound Cue. Rename the Sound Cue to something memorable and reusable; for this tutorial, name it Starter_Music_Cue. Next, add a .wav file to the Content Browser that the Sound Cue can play back. Choose a .wav file from your file browser and drag and drop it into the Content Browser. Next, double-click the Sound Cue to open the Sound Cue Editor. In the editor, drag the .wav file from the Content Browser into the Sound Cue graph and connect its output pin to the Output node’s input pin. Save the Sound Cue.

Now the Sound Cue will play back the .wav file, but it will not be spatialized. To tell Unreal to spatialize this source, the Sound Attenuation asset is utilized. Right-click in the Content Browser and select Audio > Sound Attenuation to create a new asset. Double-click the Sound Attenuation asset to open its settings and change the Attenuation (Spatialization)’s Spatialization Method setting to Binaural.

Now this asset can be attached to the Sound Cue by entering the Sound Cue’s settings under Attenuation > Attenuation Settings and selecting the Sound Attenuation asset that was just created.

Now drag and drop the Sound Cue from the Content Browser into the game. When you enter play mode, the sound should appear to come from the location you placed it in the game.

Click Play in Unreal and move around to listen to the spatialization in action.

Adding reflections makes the audio more realistic. To do this, create a single reverb submix effect and route all the spatialized sound cues through that submix.

Create a new Sound Submix by right-clicking in the Content Browser and selecting Audio > Mix > Sound Submix. Then route your Sound Cue into this submix by double-clicking the Sound Cue and under Effects > Submix set the Base Submix to the Sound Submix.

Now the Sound Cue is routed through the Submix, but still no reverb is produced. In order to tell the plugin to generate reverb, a Submix Effect Preset has to be added to the submix.

Create a new Sound Submix Effect Preset by right-clicking in the Content Browser and selecting Audio > Effects > Submix Effect Preset and choosing the SubmixEffectMetaXRReverbPluginPreset option. Attach the MetaXRReverb effect preset to the Sound Submix by adding an Index to the Submix Effect Chain by clicking the + button.

Return to the Unreal project and click Play to hear how it sounds with the reverb added. From here you may want to gain additional control over how the reverb sounds. Head to the Unreal project and find the Outliner. Right-click an actor and add a Meta XR Audio Room Component. This object represents the game’s overall geometric properties. Now start the game again and change these controls in real time to hear how they impact the reverb’s sound.

Each source spatializer instance has a few additional settings to help customize the sound for each source. To gain access to these controls the Meta XR Audio Source Settings asset is used. Create a new “Meta XR Audio Source Settings” by right-clicking in the Content Browser and selecting Audio > MetaXR > Meta XR Audio Source Settings. This asset has to be attached to a Sound Attenuation asset by double-clicking the Sound Attenuation asset to open its settings. Attach the Source Settings to the Sound Attenuation object by clicking the plus next to Spatialization Plugin Settings and selecting the Meta XR Audio Source Settings asset.

To demonstrate a source setting, open the Meta XR Audio Source Settings asset attached to your Sound Attenuation and find the Directivity Pattern control. By default it is None but for this demo change it to Human Voice. Now play the game again and hear how the sound filters as you move around the source sphere.

To learn about all the features available, see the source documentation or the reverb documentation.

To demonstrate how ambisonics work in the MetaXRAudio SDK, this section adds an ambisonic bed to the project. Find an ambisonic file in your file browser and drag and drop it onto the Content Browser. Double-click the file to go to its settings and ensure that ambisonics are enabled for this file as shown below:

In order to render ambisonic files binaurally, the ambisonic file has to be routed into a Soundfield Submix. This is Unreal’s container type for ambisonic processing. To do so, right-click in the Content Browser and select Audio > Mix > Soundfield Submix. Create a new Sound Cue for the ambisonic file just like the mono file from above and select the ambisonic file as the source. Then double-click the Sound Cue and under Submix > Base Submix, select the Soundfield Submix that was just created.

Finally, it is necessary to specify to Unreal that the Meta XR Audio SDK should be used for ambisonic encoding on the submix. If this is not specified, Unreal defaults to its built-in encoder. To change it, double-click the Soundfield Submix you created above. Set the Soundfield > Soundfield Encoding Format to MetaXR Binaural.

Return to the Unreal project and click Play. Listen to the ambisonics being rendered and take note of how it will rotate as you move about the scene.

That concludes this tutorial building a real project using the Meta XR Audio Plugin for Unreal. You should now be able to quickly spatialize any new sounds you add to your game as well as alter the room acoustics for the project.

For more advanced spatialization, learn how to use Acoustic Ray Tracing.