@Christoph Polus
Setting a scatterer instrument’s min and max distance to 0 prevents 3D Panners being automatically added to instances of single instruments spawned by that scatterer instrument, meaning that those single instruments will not be subject to 3D panning or distance attenuation unless it is applied by some other source.
It’s true that an instance that’s located more distance units away from the listener than that instance’s max falloff distance will be inaudible. However, that does not mean that instances of single instruments spawned by a scatterer instrument will always be inaudible if that scatterer insturment’s max distance is set to more than 20, for two reasons:
- The random positions assigned by a scatterer are offsets from the position of the event emitter, not the listener; A spawn that’s far from the emitter could still be very close to the listener, and vice versa.
- The max distance is the maximum distance a spawn may be from the event emitter. A spawn could easily be closer to the emitter than that, though it cannot be closer than the scatterer’s min distance.
The definition of a 3D sound in FMOD Studio is “a sound whose behavior changes depending on its position relative to the listener in 3D space.” As such, if you want to create a sound that sounds different depending on its distance and/or direction from the listener, that sound is by definition 3D.
If you want a scatterer instrument to spawn audio at random places near the listener, attaching the event emitter to the listener is probably the best option.