What makes you call several effects as "Deprecated"?

FMOD Studio
1

Hi,

I like the effect ‘FMOD Lowpass Simple’ and ‘FMOD Lowpass’.
And they are essential to use occlusion.

I upgraded my project’s fmod version to 10901, and I found that 5 effects (FMOD Higpass, Highpass Simple, Lowpass, Lowpass Simple and Parametric EQ) are grouped as ‘FMOD Deprecated.’

What makes you call these effects as ‘deprecated’?

  1. Is there any demerit to use them?
  2. If so, what is alternative way to use Lowpass (or Lowpass Simple) for Occlusion setting?
2

We have marked those effects as ‘deprecated’ to indicate that we will no longer perform development work on those features. You can continue to use them if you want; They still work exactly the same way that they did before. However, we will not develop any new features or optimisations for these effects.

Instead, FMOD Studio 1.09.00 features the FMOD MultibandEQ effect. This effect is more versatile and powerful than the effects you mentioned, and can be used as an effective replacement for all of them. Any development work focusing on frequency filtering or EQ-related improvements that we undertake in the near future will focus on this new effect.

For information about using the FMOD MultibandEQ effect as a replacement for the deprecated effects you mentioned, see the FMOD Studio Programmer’s API documentation pages for each of the deprecated effects: https://www.fmod.com/resources/documentation-api?page=content/generated/FMOD_DSP_LOWPASS.html#/,
https://www.fmod.com/resources/documentation-api?page=content/generated/FMOD_DSP_LOWPASS_SIMPLE.html#/,
https://www.fmod.com/resources/documentation-api?page=content/generated/FMOD_DSP_HIGHPASS.html#/,
https://www.fmod.com/resources/documentation-api?page=content/generated/FMOD_DSP_HIGHPASS_SIMPLE.html#/,
https://www.fmod.com/resources/documentation-api?page=content/generated/FMOD_DSP_PARAMEQ.html#/.

In addition, we may someday decide to remove these effects from FMOD Studio entirely. If this does eventually occur, we will clearly indicate the change in the release notes, and you will be given the option of using a version of FMOD Studio that still supports the deprecated effects.

1 Like
3

Thank you very much, Joseph.
However, I have a question remained.

According to this page - http://www.fmod.org/documentation/#content/generated/engine_ue4/occlusion.html - ,
Events with that sec Occlusion Gain and Low-Pass Directly

"Note for a low-pass to be applied, you have to add a low-pass DSP to the master track of the event."  ~~ 

Can I replace a low-pass DSP to Multiband EQ on the master track of my occlusion using events?
4

Unfortunately at the moment the Multiband EQ will not get used for occlusion. Hopefully this functionality will be available in our next release. In the mean time, you can continue using the lowpass effect.

1 Like
5

Thank you for your answer, Cameron and Joseph.

6

All links above are not working.

7

I have updated them now.

8

Should effects in the deprecated categhory be avoided for stability reasons or will you keep on puting as much attention into having them work properly as the rest (even though they wont get new functions and such)?

9

We mark effects as deprecated if we have introduced newer effects that that perform the same function with better quality and/or at a lower resource cost. We will continue to provide bug fixes for deprecated effects for the foreseeable future, in order to support legacy FMOD Studio projects that may still make use of them; however, we are no longer engaged in optimizing their performance, improving their quality, or extending their functionality with new features.

As of the time of writing (February of 2025), the multiband EQ effect has filters that can fulfil the role of every effect in our deprecated effect menu. As the multiband EQ effect is better optimized than our deprecated effects, we recommend using it instead of them in new FMOD Studio projects.