# Bank load status functions in RuntimeManager erroneously report banks as loaded while loading asynchronously
**URL:** https://qa.fmod.com/t/bank-load-status-functions-in-runtimemanager-erroneously-report-banks-as-loaded-while-loading-asynchronously/23549
**Category:** Unity
**Created:** [October 30, 2025, 6:47am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/bank-load-status-functions-in-runtimemanager-erroneously-report-banks-as-loaded-while-loading-asynchronously/23549 "2025-10-30T06:47:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@zanhulme](https://qa.fmod.com/u/zanhulme)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2025, 6:47am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/bank-load-status-functions-in-runtimemanager-erroneously-report-banks-as-loaded-while-loading-asynchronously/23549/1 "2025-10-30T06:47:10Z")
I’ve been implementing some pretty granular bank loading in a project that is shipping on mobile, and I have been having some troubles with manually handling bank loading.
For a start, the `RuntimeManager.LoadBank()` function is thread-blocking by default. I had to modify this to include an option for specifying loading flags, so that I would be able to set banks to load using `NONBLOCKING` instead of `NORMAL`
That’s fine, but then I found that if I set a bank to load with the `NONBLOCKING` flag, then immediately query the `HasBankLoaded()`, `HaveAllBanksLoaded()`, or `AnySampleDataLoading()` functions in the RuntimeManager, each of them will report that the bank has finished loading right away, even though the asynchronous load hasn’t completed.
I believe that this is the case because I’m running a coroutine that checks for the status of bank loading and creates an instance of a sound once its bank has loaded, and when I set the bank to load asynchronously, it attempts to fire off the event too early, erroring out. It doesn’t matter whether I check any or all of those functions, the result is the same.
In cases where I can know in advance that a bank will be required shortly, this isn’t an issue. But for the cases where I need to load a bank and play a sound from it as soon as possible, I have had to load these banks with the `NORMAL` flag, which is far from ideal.
One other thing to note is that the load times of the banks using thread-blocking loading are clearly visible in the Unity Profiler using Deep Profiling, but that they show no impact at all in the FMOD Profiler, which seems odd — in fact, the memory read-out in the FMOD Profiler doesn’t change when I load and unload banks either, further adding to my confusion.
Is there a way to reliably check whether an async bank is currently loading?
For context, I’m working in Unity 6000.0.55f1 and FMOD 2.02.18
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### Author:  [@jeff\_fmod](https://qa.fmod.com/u/jeff_fmod)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2025, 11:54pm UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/bank-load-status-functions-in-runtimemanager-erroneously-report-banks-as-loaded-while-loading-asynchronously/23549/2 "2025-11-12T23:54:41Z")
> [@zanhulme](#):
>
> For a start, the `RuntimeManager.LoadBank()` function is thread-blocking by default. I had to modify this to include an option for specifying loading flags, so that I would be able to set banks to load using `NONBLOCKING` instead of `NORMAL`
Changing the loading mode to `NONBLOCKING` would cause `loadBank` to return immediately and short-circuit the logic for `HasBankLoaded` and `HaveAllBanksLoaded`, since they are just checking for a map entry and `loadingBanksRef` respectively.
As for `AnySampleDataLoading`, I see there’s no error check for whether the bank has loaded successfully. Calling `getSampleLoadingState` on a `NONBLOCKING` bank that hasn’t finished loading would return an error, and the load state would be `UNLOADED`, causing `AnySampleDataLoading` would return false, giving you a false positive that the whole operation has been completed when really it hasn’t begun at all.
> [@zanhulme](#):
>
> But for the cases where I need to load a bank and play a sound from it as soon as possible, I have had to load these banks with the `NORMAL` flag, which is far from ideal.
For the case where you need to load a bank and play a sound as quickly as possible you need `NORMAL`/blocking bank loading don’t you? `NONBLOCKING` isn’t going to speed anything up- perhaps I misunderstand your meaning here.
> [@zanhulme](#):
>
> they show no impact at all in the FMOD Profiler, which seems odd — in fact, the memory read-out in the FMOD Profiler doesn’t change when I load and unload banks either, further adding to my confusion.
That does sound odd, can you please provide a screenshot of the load time discrepancy between the FMOD Profiler and the Unity Profiler?
> [@zanhulme](#):
>
> Is there a way to reliably check whether an async bank is currently loading?
In the “load\_bank” FMOD Engine example we demonstrate how to poll a combination of the bank load and sample data load states to determine when a `NONBLOCKING` bank is finished loading. Essentially you want to poll `Bank.getLoadingState` until it is `LOADING_STATE.LOADED`, and then poll `Bank.getSampleLoadingState` until that returns `LOADING_STATE.LOADED`. After that, you can be certain that the `NONBLOCKING` load has completed successfully.
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### Author:  [@zanhulme](https://qa.fmod.com/u/zanhulme)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2025, 3:49am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/bank-load-status-functions-in-runtimemanager-erroneously-report-banks-as-loaded-while-loading-asynchronously/23549/3 "2025-11-13T03:49:24Z")
> [@jeff\_fmod](#):
>
> For the case where you need to load a bank and play a sound as quickly as possible you need `NORMAL`/blocking bank loading don’t you? `NONBLOCKING` isn’t going to speed anything up- perhaps I misunderstand your meaning here.
In this instance I would rather play the sound after a short delay than cause a frame hitch. To make the delay as short as possible, I want to check the bank load status each frame and trigger the event as soon as the bank has finished loading, but that requires knowing the load status.
> [@jeff\_fmod](#):
>
> Essentially you want to poll `Bank.getLoadingState` until it is `LOADING_STATE.LOADED`, and then poll `Bank.getSampleLoadingState` until that returns `LOADING_STATE.LOADED`. After that, you can be certain that the `NONBLOCKING` load has completed successfully.
I hadn’t tried polling the bank directly in this way because I couldn’t find any information on how to actually access a bank struct — I’ve finally found that I can use the Runtime Manager to get the Studio System instance, which in turn has a function to return a bank object that I can call these functions on. Is this covered in the documentation anywhere? If so I haven’t been able to find it.
With that, I think I’ve got what I need to manage this now, thanks!
> [@jeff\_fmod](#):
>
> That does sound odd, can you please provide a screenshot of the load time discrepancy between the FMOD Profiler and the Unity Profiler?
I wasn’t able to reproduce this, I think I must have been wrong about it. It’s possible that I just couldn’t see the impact of loading/unloading very small banks in the FMOD Profiler, since the initial memory spike of starting the profiler session blows out the scale of the I/O row.
This screenshot is of loading a very small bank asynchronously, and even after stretching out the File I/O row this far it’s only barely visible as a block a single pixel tall, so it’s easy to miss that it even happened.
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### Author:  [@jeff\_fmod](https://qa.fmod.com/u/jeff_fmod)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2025, 10:21pm UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/bank-load-status-functions-in-runtimemanager-erroneously-report-banks-as-loaded-while-loading-asynchronously/23549/4 "2025-11-18T22:21:04Z")
> [@zanhulme](#):
>
> I’ve finally found that I can use the Runtime Manager to get the Studio System instance, which in turn has a function to return a bank object that I can call these functions on. Is this covered in the documentation anywhere?
The [RuntimeManager](https://fmod.com/docs/2.02/unity/api-runtimemanager.html) doc mentions a few of things you can expect to access through the `RuntimeManager`, including the various `System` instances and bank objects, but I suppose the details on what you can do with those are hidden away in the [API docs](https://fmod.com/docs/2.02/api/welcome.html).
There isn’t anything explicit about how to get from the `RuntimeManger` all the way down to a `FMOD::Studio::Bank`. I’m thinking perhaps we could add the diagram from our [FMOD for Unity page](https://fmod.com/unity#Audio_tools) and explain the separation between the Integration, Studio, and Core APIs, and how to move between them. Would that help bridge the concepts better? Otherwise, is there anything you can think of adding that would have made it easier to bridge the gaps between these concepts?
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### Author:  [@zanhulme](https://qa.fmod.com/u/zanhulme)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2025, 3:02am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/bank-load-status-functions-in-runtimemanager-erroneously-report-banks-as-loaded-while-loading-asynchronously/23549/5 "2025-11-19T03:02:44Z")
Well I didn’t even know that that _FMOD for Unity page_ existed, since it doesn’t come up under the _Learn_ menu. It also seems more like a sales pitch than a reference doc, so I probably wouldn’t look at it even if I did know where it was.
I don’t think it’s clear that the Engine docs are actually relevant to people using the Unity or Unreal integrations — it seems obvious enough to go through the _Scripting API_ section of the Unity Integration docs, but it took me some time to realise that I actually needed to consult the Engine docs to find out certain things.
For example, so far as I can find there is never any mention of the _Bank_ struct in the Unity documentation, only ever bank reference strings, or the StudioBankLoader component.
What I think would be most helpful is if the subsections of the _Unity Integration Scripting API Reference_ had links to the relevant parts of the Engine docs, so that a person searching for “bank” in the Unity docs will eventually be able to find their way to the `Bank.getLoadingState and Bank.getSampleLoadingState` functions you mentioned above. I didn’t know those even existed until you told me, I had assumed it was outside the scope of what I had access to in Unity.
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### Author:  [@jeff\_fmod](https://qa.fmod.com/u/jeff_fmod)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2025, 1:07am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/bank-load-status-functions-in-runtimemanager-erroneously-report-banks-as-loaded-while-loading-asynchronously/23549/6 "2025-11-26T01:07:44Z")
> [@zanhulme](#):
>
> I don’t think it’s clear that the Engine docs are actually relevant to people using the Unity or Unreal integrations
That’s great feedback, I have never noticed the lack of interlinking between the Unity integration docs and our FMOD Engine docs, but you are right the Scripting API Reference should really have links to the relevant lower-level concepts.
I have passed your suggestions onto our docs people, thank you for bringing this to our attention!
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### Author:  [@zanhulme](https://qa.fmod.com/u/zanhulme)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 6:44am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/bank-load-status-functions-in-runtimemanager-erroneously-report-banks-as-loaded-while-loading-asynchronously/23549/7 "2025-12-02T06:44:13Z")
For the benefit of anyone following this, I ended up having some issues with my whole approach here and it turned out to be a much better to load all banks as metadata only, then load and unload sample data per event on demand.
I’m letting FMOD’s system handle this 90% of the time, and then I’m manually unloading sample data when stopping certain events that are big and that I know I won’t be using again soon.