# Offline rendering of elements - recreating an audio app **URL:** \ **Category:** FMOD Engine\ **Tags:** unity, core-api\ **Created:** [October 13, 2025, 7:53am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/offline-rendering-of-elements-recreating-an-audio-app/23461 "2025-10-13T07:53:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![fbpsound](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/fbpsound/32/2451_2.png) [@fbpsound](https://qa.fmod.com/u/fbpsound)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2025, 7:53am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/offline-rendering-of-elements-recreating-an-audio-app/23461/1 "2025-10-13T07:53:15Z")
Hello! We are working on a game which features several “audio applications”. In our game, you open up audio files and work on them. So we were wondering how to properly display sound data without having to rely on realtime playback to get DSP data. Basically, we would need to re-create some parts of a standard audio editing program, with the audio data being presented faster-than-realtime. Any suggestions on how to tackle this is highly appreciated! Filippo ---
**Author:** ![Connor\_FMOD](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/connor_fmod/32/3685_2.png) [@Connor\_FMOD](https://qa.fmod.com/u/Connor_FMOD)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2025, 6:16am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/offline-rendering-of-elements-recreating-an-audio-app/23461/2 "2025-10-14T06:16:03Z")
Hi, You are able to extract PCM data without playing the sound: [FMOD Engine | Advanced Core Api Topics - Extracting Pcm Data From A Sound](https://www.fmod.com/docs/2.02/api/advanced-core-api-topics.html#extracting-pcm-data-from-a-sound) would this be a valid option? Is this a similar issue as you were experiencing before: [Visualizing both classic Loudness x Time and Spectrogram](https://qa.fmod.com/t/visualizing-both-classic-loudness-x-time-and-spectrogram/22551)? ---
**Author:** ![fbpsound](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/fbpsound/32/2451_2.png) [@fbpsound](https://qa.fmod.com/u/fbpsound)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2025, 8:58am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/offline-rendering-of-elements-recreating-an-audio-app/23461/3 "2025-10-21T08:58:30Z")
Hello Connor, hhank you for your answer! Yes, it is a similar issue as we were experiencing before. Since my last post, we have explored our options in this regard. As far as we could see, the approach you posted requires audio files to be present outside of FMOD. Since we handle all our game’s audio through FMOD, this does not really work for us. We haven’t found a way to read data in the same way from an FMOD event, or through the banks. We tried playing around with DSPs extensively. However, they require the event to run in order to listen to data, and also cannot do it faster than realtime. We’d need the entire audio clip/event data as fast as possible. We have read about custom DSP plugins. Would that be able to bypass these limitations then? We used timeline markers and event user properties to pass custom per-event-data in our current prototype, but that made our workflow much more error prone and tedious. If you know a way to query advanced info of events and their components (sub events, clips, effects, parameters, etc.) from outside FMOD, that’d be very useful to us. Thank you in advance! ---
**Author:** ![fbpsound](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/fbpsound/32/2451_2.png) [@fbpsound](https://qa.fmod.com/u/fbpsound)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2025, 6:42pm UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/offline-rendering-of-elements-recreating-an-audio-app/23461/4 "2025-10-26T18:42:38Z")
Hi Connor, as an additional way to explain what we would need, our coder made a little “interactive” explainer quickly: [https://gemini.google.com/share/698be75ec6fb](https://gemini.google.com/share/698be75ec6fb) We’re basically trying to (partly) recreate an audio editor 😅 Let us know if you need any more details, happy to answer in any way we can! Filippo ---
**Author:** ![fbpsound](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/fbpsound/32/2451_2.png) [@fbpsound](https://qa.fmod.com/u/fbpsound)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2025, 10:40am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/offline-rendering-of-elements-recreating-an-audio-app/23461/5 "2025-11-03T10:40:54Z")
Dear Connor, just checking if you could give us some pointers as to how to solve our conundrum 😃 Let me know if you need any more input from my side. Thanks! Cheers from Munich, Filippo ---
**Author:** ![jeff\_fmod](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/jeff_fmod/32/1766_2.png) [@jeff\_fmod](https://qa.fmod.com/u/jeff_fmod)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2025, 6:09am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/offline-rendering-of-elements-recreating-an-audio-app/23461/6 "2025-11-12T06:09:44Z")
Sorry about the delay, Connor has been away at conferences and it looks like this case didn’t get reassigned for some reason. There is no way to combine realtime and non-realtime DSP processing in FMOD because that’s essentially a system-level setting ([`FMOD.OUTPUTTYPE`](https://fmod.com/docs/2.02/api/core-api-system.html#fmod_outputtype)), but if you store your loose audio assets in a folder you could use a [Programmer Instrument](https://fmod.com/docs/2.02/studio/glossary.html#programmer-instrument) to play them back, and manipulate the sample data inside the [`CREATE_PROGRAMMER_SOUND`](https://fmod.com/docs/2.02/api/studio-api-eventinstance.html#fmod_studio_event_callback_type) callback. I haven’t tested this, but based off of the [Unity Programmer Sound Example](https://fmod.com/docs/2.02/unity/examples-programmer-sounds.html) you could do something like: ```csharp case FMOD.Studio.EVENT_CALLBACK_TYPE.CREATE_PROGRAMMER_SOUND: { FMOD.MODE soundMode = FMOD.MODE.LOOP_NORMAL | FMOD.MODE.CREATECOMPRESSEDSAMPLE; var parameter = (FMOD.Studio.PROGRAMMER_SOUND_PROPERTIES)Marshal.PtrToStructure(parameterPtr, typeof(FMOD.Studio.PROGRAMMER_SOUND_PROPERTIES)); FMOD.Sound dialogueSound; var soundResult = FMODUnity.RuntimeManager.CoreSystem.createSound(Application.streamingAssetsPath + "/" + key, soundMode, out dialogueSound); if (soundResult == FMOD.RESULT.OK) { dialogueSound.getLength(out uint soundLengthBytes, TIMEUNIT.RAWBYTES); var res = dialogueSound.@lock(0, soundLengthBytes, out IntPtr ptr1, out IntPtr ptr2, out uint lenBytes1, out uint lenBytes2); if (res != FMOD.RESULT.OK) Debug.LogError(res); /* * Though exinfo.format is float, data retrieved from Sound::lock is in bytes, * therefore we only copy (len1+len2)/sizeof(float) full float values across */ int lenFloats1 = (int)(lenBytes1 / sizeof(float)); int lenFloats2 = (int)(lenBytes2 / sizeof(float)); int totalFloatsRead = lenFloats1 + lenFloats2; float[] tmpBufferFloats = new float[totalFloatsRead]; for(int i = 0; i < totalFloatsRead; i++) { // Modify sound data, in this case just half volume tmpBufferFloats[i] *= 0.5f; } // Copy data back to pointers if (lenBytes1 > 0) { Marshal.Copy(tmpBufferFloats, 0, ptr1, lenFloats1); } if (lenBytes2 > 0) { Marshal.Copy(tmpBufferFloats, lenFloats1, ptr2, lenFloats2); } // Push pointers back to FMOD Sound res = mSound.unlock(ptr1, ptr2, lenBytes1, lenBytes2); parameter.sound = dialogueSound.handle; parameter.subsoundIndex = -1; Marshal.StructureToPtr(parameter, parameterPtr, false); } } ``` ---
**Author:** ![fbpsound](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/fbpsound/32/2451_2.png) [@fbpsound](https://qa.fmod.com/u/fbpsound)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2025, 3:18pm UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/offline-rendering-of-elements-recreating-an-audio-app/23461/7 "2025-11-25T15:18:49Z")
Thank you! This was helpful. In the end we decided to do some of these things using pre-rendered waveform visualizations, to make our lives a bit easier - it’s a game after all, and not a full blown audio editor 😃 Cheers and thanks again for your input! Filippo