Scatterer Instrument not playing in Unity Build

Unity
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1

Hello, I am struggling with an issue with my environment audio in Unity.

I have one track playing the ocean and a second track playing seagulls as a scatterer instrument. It works well in the Editor but when I build the game I do not hear the seagulls (scatterer instrument). What is the most likely issue? Is there a way that I can debug it to see what’s playing from a specific event so I can see if there are any issues? Any debugging tips for this? (nothing in the console).

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Thank you!

2

The most likely cause of this issue is the seagull sounds being attenuated to silence due to distance. If that is the case, there are multiple possible solutions to the problem, all of them easy to implement.

To explain the problem… I can see from your screenshot that the scatterer instrument is set to a min and max distance of 1 and 20 units, and that its playlist contains single instruments. When a scatterer instrument with min and max distance greater than 0 spawns a sound based on single instrument, it automatically adds a hidden spatializer effect to that sound. (It does this in order to ensure the position randomly assigned to that sound by the scatterer instrument affects that sound’s attenuation and panning.) The min and max distance of the hidden spatializer effect are set to 1 and 20, and these values cannot be changed. This means that if the event instance containing the scatterer instrument is more than 40 distance units from the listener, none of the sounds it spawns will be audible - and if the event emitter is fixed at a particular location in the game world that the listener is rarely close to, it is likely that the listener will frequently be that far away.

As for the a solution… The first thing to check is the location of the event emitter. It should be at the center of the area in which you want the seagull cries to be audible. (If that’s “everywhere” then you might want to consider attaching the emitter to the listener, or otherwise ensuring that it remains close to the listener at all times.)

If you’re happy with the current position of the event emitter, but want the seagulls to be audible from further away:

  1. Remove all the entries from the scatterer instrument’s playlist.
  2. Add an event instrument to the scatterer instrument’s playlist.
  3. Double-click on the new event instrument to view its content.
  4. Add a multi instrument to the start of the new event’s timeline (or delete its timeline sheet, add an action sheet, and add a multi instrument to that action sheet; either will produce the same result.)
  5. Remember those playlist entries you removed from the scatterer instrument’s playlist back in step 1? Add them to the multi instrument’s playlist.
  6. Select the new event’s master track, and add a spatializer effect to the deck.
  7. Edit the min and max distance properties in the event macro controls. I don’t know what scale your game uses, but I imagine you’ll be able to look at the position of the event emitter in your game world and work out what distances from it you want the seagull cries to be audible at, and set the max distance property accordingly.