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Add to SafariWhen comparing FMOD Studio vs Amplitude Audio SDK, the Slant community recommends Amplitude Audio SDK for most people. In the question“What are the best audio engines?” Amplitude Audio SDK is ranked 3rd while FMOD Studio is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Amplitude Audio SDK is:
Amplitude offers a plugin API to allow developers to extends possibilities with the engine by adding custom effects, codecs, pipelines, and more.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Cross-platform
Windows, Windows Phone, Mac OS X, iOS, Android, Linux, PS3, PS4, PSVita, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U
Pro Studio interface presents a lot on one view really well
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.
Pro Unreal game engine integration fully supported
Pro Unity game engine integration fully supported
Well, fully supported except for parameterized one-shot events through FMOD's Unity components, and lack of good getting started documentation showing best practices for various needs.
Pro Autopitch modulator
Easy to automate pitch bending with an RPM parameter, for example. Far easier to use and understand than Wwise's Smart pitch curve command. No idea which is more efficient, however.
Pro Used in many high profile commercial games
Pro Free license for non-commercial/educational/indies (budget < $100k)
Pro Already integrated with many game engines
Pro Extensible at the core
Amplitude offers a plugin API to allow developers to extends possibilities with the engine by adding custom effects, codecs, pipelines, and more.
Pro Provide Official Plugins for game engines
As today, Amplitude provides official plugins for O3DE and ezEngine. A plugin for Godot will be provided soon.
Pro Multi-platform support
Amplitude runs on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. Android and iOS support is still under development.
Pro Data-driven assets authoring
With Amplitude, assets are written in JSON files. It make them really easy to manage and edit. Most of the time there was not too may code to write after the integration in a game.
Pro Free License
Amplitude is licensed under Apache-2.0. So you can use it for free and commercial products without restrictions.
Cons
Con Not enough sensitivity in randomized playlists
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.
Con Unclear on how to handle parameterized one-shot events in Unity
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.
Con No GUI authoring tool
Amplitude doesn't provide a GUI authoring tool at the moment. But according to the website, it is being actively under development.
