Base — ships in GS_Audio.
Spatialization is what makes a sound feel like it is coming from somewhere. In GS_Audio it is powered by Steam Audio and it is automatic: place a source in the world and it is spatialized, with no per-sound setup and nothing to wire into an effects chain.
This page covers what the base gem does. Occlusion and geometry-driven reflections — sound genuinely blocked and reverberated by world geometry — are Audio Pro features.
For usage guides and setup examples, see The Basics: GS_Audio.
Contents
How a Sound Is Placed
Each 3D sound instance gets its own spatializer node, inserted between the source and its volume channel. Direction is recomputed every frame from the source-to-listener vector.
A source uses either miniaudio’s built-in spatializer or Steam Audio’s binaural path, depending on the project’s spatialization mode. Never both — a fixed HRTF layered over a positional pan cancels the spatial presence the pan was already producing.
The listener that all of this measures against lives on the Audio Manager, including the split spatial/orientation setup that lets proximity follow your character while direction follows your camera.
See the Audio Signal Model for where this sits in the chain and why it is a property of the source rather than an effect.
Distance
Distance is handled alongside direction: attenuation plus air absorption, both derived from the source-to-listener distance and the event’s authored Distance Min/Max.
The framework uses a bounded distance curve rather than the raw inverse-distance model:
| Signal | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Direct (the dry sound) | Full within min distance, attenuating to true silence at and beyond max distance. |
| Reverb send | Flat until 75% of max distance, then eased smoothly to zero at max. |
The reason to state this plainly: a pure inverse-distance model never reaches zero and ignores a maximum distance, which leaves a faint version of every sound audible forever. The bounded curve trades physical exactness for a max distance that actually means something. An event’s Distance Min/Max therefore controls both how far the dry sound carries and how far it feeds the environment.
It is a chosen curve, not a physical simulation.
Configuration
All of it lives on the Audio Manager’s project settings, so the manager’s component panel is the configuration surface.
| Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Spatialization | Binaural | Stereo turns HRTF off and uses miniaudio’s spatializer. Binaural uses Steam Audio HRTF. |
| HRTF Interpolation | Nearest | Nearest is cheap and good for point sources. Bilinear costs more and is better for wide-band material such as noise. |
| HRTF Volume | 1.0 | Level of the binaural path. |
| Default Min / Max Distance | 1.0 / 100.0 | Metres. Per-event distances override these. |
HRTF settings are hidden in the editor unless spatialization is set to Binaural.
The spatialization back-end is resolved when sounds preload and does not change at runtime.
Limits Worth Knowing
These are expected behaviour for the technique, not defects — worth knowing before you evaluate the result.
- Front/back and elevation cues are subtle. The HRTF is generic, with no head tracking and no per-listener personalization. Left/right positioning is clear and reliable; “above and behind me” is not something a generic HRTF conveys strongly.
- Distance attenuation is a chosen curve, as described above, rather than physically exact falloff.
- Nothing blocks sound in the base gem. A sound behind a wall is quieter with distance but is not occluded — geometry is not consulted. Occlusion and geometry-driven reverb are Audio Pro features.
See Also
For related systems:
- Audio Manager — the listener and project settings
- Audio Events — per-event distance and 2D/3D
- Audio Signal Model — where spatialization sits in the chain
For conceptual overviews and usage guides:
Get GS_Audio
GS_Audio — Explore this gem on the product page and add it to your project.