Audio Pro
GS_AudioPro — the premium audio gem. Visual graph authoring, procedural scoring, Klatt voice synthesis and geometric acoustics, layered onto everything the free gem already does.
GS_Audio
The GS audio framework — event-based playback, mixing and the full DSP effect palette, HRTF spatialization, and the premium Audio Pro tier adding visual graph authoring, geometric acoustics, scoring and voice synthesis.
Categories:
Audio in GS_Play is two gems, and the line between them is the free/premium product line.
- GS_Audio — the base gem. Free. The engine, audio events, pooling, mixing, the full DSP effect palette, the listener, and HRTF spatialization with distance attenuation.
- GS_AudioPro — the premium gem. Depends on the base. Adds the visual Audio Event Graph, procedural scoring, Klatt voice synthesis, and geometric acoustics.
The split is about authoring, not audio quality
The base gem is not a cut-down signal path. It carries the complete DSP effect palette and the same HRTF spatialization that Pro uses. What Pro adds is authoring surface — a visual canvas instead of component panels — plus geometry-driven acoustics, procedural music and synthesised speech. A project built entirely on the free tier is not signal-crippled.Every page in this section marks features Base or Pro, because that tag tells you which gem a feature ships in.
For usage guides and setup examples, see The Basics: GS_Audio.
Contents
- Start Here: the Signal Model
- What Lives Where
- Audio Management
- Audio Events
- Mixing & Effects
- Spatialization
- Audio Pro
- Dependencies
- Installation
- See Also
Start Here: the Signal Model
Before the feature pages, read the Audio Signal Model. It covers the two-plane architecture, what miniaudio, Steam Audio and SoLoud each actually do, the canonical order stages run in, and the vocabulary the rest of these pages use.
It also explains the one thing most likely to trip you up: spatialization is a property of a source, not a mix effect.
What Lives Where
| Capability | GS_Audio (Base, free) | GS_AudioPro (Premium) |
|---|---|---|
| Audio engine, node graph and output | Yes | uses the base engine |
| Audio events, libraries, pooling and instancing | Yes | — |
| Mixing buses, volume channels, influence system | Yes | — |
| DSP effects | all 22 effect types, authored on components | the same processors, authored as graph nodes |
| Spatialization | HRTF binaural + distance attenuation | adds occlusion and reflections |
| The listener | Yes, including split spatial/orientation targets | — |
| Visual Audio Event Graph | — | Yes |
| Procedural scoring | — | Yes |
| Klatt voice synthesis | — | Yes |
| Geometric acoustics | — | Yes |
One processor, two authoring skins: each DSP effect exists once and is surfaced twice — as a component-authored mix effect in the base gem, and as a graph node in Pro. They are the same processor wearing different authoring surfaces.
Audio Management
Base. The Audio Manager is the singleton that owns the audio engine, the mixing channels, the loaded event libraries and the listener. It extends GS_ManagerComponent and participates in the standard manager lifecycle — including headless deployment, if you want audio in a project with no Game Manager.
| Component | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Audio Manager | Master audio controller — engine lifecycle, project settings, the listener, mixing channels, event libraries. |
Audio Events
Base. A named sound the game can fire, authored in a .aev library. An event declares only what plays — pooling, concurrency, distance, tracking and spatialization are shared machinery every event type inherits.
| Page | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Audio Events | Event libraries, the three event types, pooling and concurrency, and how to write a new event type. |
| SFXR Profiles | Procedural chiptone assets, sfxr.me import, and randomized profile pools. |
Three kinds of event ship: file pools (a set of clips, one picked at random per fire), procedural noise, and sfxr chiptones. All three are pooled the same way, so variation costs nothing at the call site.
Audio Events API SFXR Profiles
Mixing & Effects
Base. Named volume channels built on custom miniaudio nodes, each with its own level and an optional effects chain, plus environmental influence that lets world volumes push effects onto channels with priority stacking.
This is the free tier’s authoring surface for the DSP palette — all 22 effect types, configured on components and routed by name rather than wired on a canvas.
| Page | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Mixing & Effects | Volume channels, environmental influence, and the mixing request bus. |
| Mix Effects | The 22 effect types, named chains, order-independent wiring, runtime control. |
Mixing & Effects API Mix Effects
Spatialization
Base. HRTF binaural placement and distance attenuation, applied automatically to every 3D source. There is no spatializer to author — place a source and it is spatialized.
| Page | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Spatialization | How a sound is placed, the bounded distance curve, HRTF settings, and the limits worth knowing. |
Audio Pro
Premium. GS_AudioPro extends every base feature and adds four of its own. It subclasses the base Audio Manager, so a project moves onto Pro by swapping one component rather than rebuilding its audio setup.
| Feature | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Audio Event Graph | Visual node editor for authoring complex sound events — sources, filters, effects, routing and phase lifecycle. |
| Score Arrangement | Multi-layer procedural music — time signature, tempo, fade control and runtime layer selection. |
| Klatt Voice Synthesis | Formant text-to-speech with 3D spatial audio and configurable voice profiles. |
| Geometric acoustics | Real occlusion and reflections computed from world geometry and acoustic materials. |
Pro’s buses are separate from the base gem’s. Scoring is on AudioScoreRequestBus, graphs on AudioGraphRequestBus, voice on the Klatt buses — none of them on AudioManagerRequestBus.
Dependencies
GS_Audio (Base)
- GS_Core (required)
- MiniAudio gem (required)
- Steam Audio — vendored, loaded at runtime, for HRTF spatialization and distance attenuation
- SoLoud — vendored. The gem’s DSP effect and source node implementations derive from SoLoud, and its generators feed the effect nodes.
GS_AudioPro (Premium)
- GS_Audio (required)
- SoLoud — used further as the synthesis engine behind Klatt voice
Installation
- Enable the GS_Audio gem in your project configuration.
- Ensure GS_Core and the MiniAudio gem are also enabled.
- Create an Audio Manager prefab and add it to the Game Manager’s Startup Managers list — or tick Headless on the manager if your project has no Game Manager.
For the premium tier, enable GS_AudioPro as well and use the Pro Audio Manager component on your manager prefab in place of the base one.
See Also
For conceptual overviews and usage guides:
For related resources:
Get GS_Audio
GS_Audio — Explore this gem on the product page and add it to your project.