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HDR coming to Wwise.

The Montreal International Games Summit was buzzing last week with news and info about a groundbreaking mix system (made famous by DICE in their Frostbite engine) coming to Wwise.

This presentation by Simon Ashby of AudioKinetic laid the groundwork…

HDR Audio Mixing: Myths, Facts and Techniques Behind HDR Audio

“Due to the non-linearity and unpredictability of game audio, much thought has been given to automatic and intelligent mixing tools over the last few years. HDR (High Dynamic Range) audio has received a lot of attention after the huge success of a well-known franchise which used HDR to improve the quality of their in-game audio mix. The lecture will explain in details what HDR audio consist of in theory, and how game developers really use it in practice. Concrete examples will be presented for two different approaches. The first operates at the audio level using a combination of dynamic effects such as compression and limiting. The second operates at the logical level where all volume attenuations are computed before mixing. Finally, in addition to the HDR system, other mixing techniques will be presented.”

Bernard Rodrigue, software developer at AudioKinetic, tweeted the above image as a sneak peek of the feature set we can expect to see, as well as confirming that the feature is scheduled for Q1 of 2013. It is another in a long line of exciting developments for AudioKinetic; in addition to their already stellar mix feature sets, and the recent addition of bus metering, aux busses and aux sends, HDR brings Wwise up to a fully featured cutting-edge powerhouse and showcase of mix technology.

Special thanks to Silvain Jannot ( @sjannot ) for live tweeting from the presentation.