Grouping sounds for separate volume controls

FMOD Studio
1

I’m just getting in to implementing FMOD Studio integration into our game, and I’m going around in circles trying to figure out the correct way to group sounds so that I can control the volume for each group.

For instance, we want to have separate volume settings for Music, for Game sounds, and for Ambient sounds. I think that this used to be an EventCategory in FMODEx

It looks like the ChannelGroup lowlevel class provides this kind of functionality, but I can see no way of determining which ChannelGroup a particular Studio::EventDescription (or Studio::EventInstance either) belongs to.

Alternatively, reading the FMOD Studio documentation on upgrading from FMODEx to FMOD Studio implies that the Studio::MixerStrip class replaces this functionality. However I can’t figure out how to create and set up these MixerStrips in the FMOD Studio application.

Can someone point me in the right direction please.

2

A mixer strip is a term which refers to buses and VCAs, you can create these in the Mixer window of FMOD Studio. A Bus is the equivalent of a Category in FMOD Designer, the VCA us a new concept that allows grouping of separates buses for volume control but without affecting the routing.

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3

Thanks Peter. I’d made some progress with this as well.
Just to try to clarify this, it seems that every event has it’s own Bus which we can use to tweak that particular sound, and each of these can be assigned to a VCA that i can use to control the volume for the entire group?

4

They can be assigned to Buses and/or VCAs, the simplest approach is to route the events into Buses just like you would with Categories.

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