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I'm in the middle of converting a game from FMOD to Wwise because -- even though the FMOD Studio interface is much nicer and easier to understand (for this indie programmer who is also pretending to be the audio designer) -- the FMOD integration with Unity (for all but the simplest of SFX) became too frustrating and broken to tolerate. Which, is too bad, because I feel that FMOD's simpler presentation could be a better fit overall for indie projects (although it still has a huge learning curve). But, in reality, I am much MUCH happier with Wwise's Unity integration even though the Wwise interface is crazy complex (and a bit annoying to look at too). The engineering of the two Unity integrations isn't even remotely similar and, so far, Wwise's is much more logical and easier (in spite of some real head-scratchers). The downside is that Wwise appears to be much buggier. Just a couple days in and I've already crashed Wwise once and had to restart Unity twice over Wwise issues (one due to a memory leak from Wwise stuff, and one because the Wwise components couldn't deal with renaming a SoundBank in Wwise). FMOD lacks some logical functionality but it never crashed hard like this either. Maybe I'll say more once I finish and know more. And the bugs keep coming... so, now it's a race to the bottom. Wwise loses some settings in Unity on occasion and also wiped all of them on an upgrade. Wwise also increased the in-editor compile time from about 10 seconds to 45 seconds! which is a huge drag (FMOD's increase was just a few seconds). And, yet, still prefer Wwise because it is much easier to code for. See More
While there is plenty to read in their docs, there is not much help in for getting started with implementing game code. Particularly, with game engine integrations and best practices for working in different ways (components vs code vs both) with each. The docs in general are weak on crosslinking, screenshots, and example code. Some integration stuff simply isn't documented anywhere and requires trial and error in hopes to figure out. Well, their course materials have some more info but they are pain to try to use as reference material (very long and very basic). See More
How many languages are needed to write a game??? Python must be installed to convert Wwise_IDs.h to Wwise_IDs.cs. Really?! Shouldn't that script have been written in C# to begin with? Or, any other Unity-compatible language or DLL for that matter. Or, just skip the .h and later conversion and provide an option to generate a .cs file in the original function. How hard could that be? Then again, Wwise Types pretty much eliminate the need for Wwise_IDs.cs if you choose to use them. See More
As compared to FMOD's integration with Unity, Wwise's makes soooooooooo much more sense! From their Unity components, to Wwise Types for simplified access the API, or just straight-up API calls, it all just makes much more sense than FMOD's confusing and incomplete Unity component implementation. Too bad the documentation for this is sorely lacking and the Unity components waste too much UI space by wrapping every field in a frame for no apparent reason. See More
Wwise Launcher is one of those pain-in-the-butt applications that wants to help you use the various features of Wwise but usually just gets in the way requiring more startup clicks than necessary to get things done. It logs you out at least once a day (even if you check "Keep me logged in") and can become uncooperative very quickly if you are not logged in. I have no idea why it is so demanding about being logged in in the first place. If you're working offline then parts of it will just spin forever leaving you unsure how what to do next. Expect to restart it regularly if you move around a lot. On the other hand, it handles things like upgrades and game integrations really well... but these are also actions that are rarely executed and don't need to be in a project-blocking application. See More
Which can also be fairly daunting to use as this forces stuff to be buried in tabs, popup dialogs, and other views. It is hard, for example, to see the big picture of a single event like you can in FMOD. But, it feels like you also have more control over details because of it. Thus, Wwise appears more geared towards hard-core sound engineers. See More
The smallest chance of random play is 1%. This may be fine enough for most situations but if, for example, you have 20 clips to randomize and you want one of them to play 1:10 of the rest, you would need ~0.5%. And if you want an Easter-egg event at 1:100, you can't get even close to that. You'll have to do it in code instead of in the studio. See More
Everything was going great with FMOD until I tried getting one-shot events to respond to parameters. If you set up your Unity project as per their instructions, one-shot events will only respond to parameter changes once in a blue moon (just to confuse you) when, according to their support, they aren't supposed to at all with Unity components, even though their docs never say this and actually seem to say quite the opposite. Thus, you can either hack you way around this caveat or implement these events without components through some very overly wordy code. Thus, you might as well do all events through code if you want some predictability in maintenance. Talking through this with support was like slogging through mud. They just can't really see what the problem is with that design split. They just don't seem to care much that you can't trigger all events properly through Unity components like they say you can. It's so irritating I'm shopping for a new audio engine even though it is very late in the game for that. If we have to re-implement all of our events another way, we might as well rebuild all of them with a more logical tool if we can. Update: currently in the middle of switching to Wwise and liking it much better even though it is far from perfect (and its UIs fairly buggy so far). See More
Compared to Wwise, for example, which splits the parameter curves that may be affecting your event into at least three different views, FMOD does a good job of flattening the hierarchy, simplifying details into nice UI gadgets, and presenting all this on one view. This may create a bit of a disconnect in understanding the hierarchy... but not really. Details may be hidden because of this but those probably aren't missed by your average developer. Showing the waveforms of the clips everywhere possible also helps. The contrast and readability of the UI is also nice. See More
The instructions on how to set up events in Unity work for all events except one-shot events that need to respond to a parameter. These events should be implemented through code instead of using the FMOD Unity components (like you can for all other events). This makes no sense from a design point and is not made clear in any documentation. You might as well implement all of FMOD through code in Unity and ignore the clumsy Unity components. See More