If I’m understanding correctly, you’re suggesting that I should have Unity use FMOD’s beat callback to conditionally begin playing a new FMOD event. Is that correct?
Can this give me sample-perfect alignment of the audio though? I’m using SFX like a programmable percussion track, where any latency in firing off a new FMOD event has to be corrected for so that it sounds on-beat with the already-playing music. As I understand from Syncing oneshot events perfectly on beat, quantization within FMOD studio achieves that, while triggering a separate FMOD event in Unity does not:
When you play an Event, the command isn’t dispatched until Studio::System::update is called. Processing of Studio update is asynchronous, when this occurs the Event start will be scheduled. Once scheduled the Event will start at the beginning of the next mixer update. These delays and update quantization will likely cause your Events to play out of lock-step with the desired beat.
The easiest way to sync playback is to do it within Studio, via nested Events, you can use the quantization and timeline tempo markers to ensure things are played back on the beat, Internally we take all the delays into account to ensure sample accuracy.