Audio Effects - Unity Official Tutorials

In Unity it's possible to process

our audio signals with audio effects

and shape their timbre, frequency content,

or the dynamics of their volume.

We can do this by adding audio effects

to a group in an audio mixer.

In our scene we have 4 game objects,

each with an audio source which contains a loop

of a different element of a musical track.

All of these are routed in to audio mixer 1.

Audio mixer 1 currently has an

attenuation effect which is there by default

on the master channel.

If we play our scene

activate Edit In Play Mode

we can adjust the volume

of the attenuation effect

and thereby control the volume of the master group.

Notice that as we adjust the volume

the changes in volume are reflected

in the volume parameter in the inspector.

It's important to note that when we make

changes in play mode those changes will be saved

to the audio mixer asset.

Unlike changes made to the scene hierarchy

for example which will be reset

when we exit play mode.

In order to apply effects processors

to the audio signal passing through the master we can

add them from the drop down menu.

We're going to add a low pass simple effect.

The low pass simple effect is a low pass

filter which allows us to attenuate

frequencies above the cut off frequency.

The default is 5000hz.

If we play our project.

Edit in play mode

and adjust the cut-off frequency

We can hear that the high frequencies are attenuated.

Audio effects are applied sequentially.

So in this cast the attenuation effect

is going to be applied first followed by

the low pass simple effect.

We'll add a distortion effect

and listen to the resulting signal.

We can hear that the distortion

adds high and mid-range harmonics

which were not previously present in the signal.

In this case the distortion is sequenced

after the low pass simple so

the high frequencies are attenuated

and then new mid and high frequencies are added.

If we want to change this order we can click

on the low pass simple and drag it down

so that it now occurs after

the distortion in the signal chain and we can listen to the effect.

What we can hear is that as we

attenuate the high frequencies using the low pass

it's cancelling out the effect of the distortion effect

because the distorted signal is being run sequentially

through the low pass simple effect.

Let's check out another example.

Here we have the Nightmares project,

which you can download from the assets store.

And what we've done is we've

routed our background music to an audio mixer,

to this music group here, and we've

added a low pass filter effect.

We've also created two

audio mixer snapshots.

Audio mixer snapshots allow us to

save and recall the settings in the mixer.

In the Unpaused snapshot the cut-off

frequency for the low pass filter is

all the way up at 22000hz.

In the Paused snapshot we've pulled it down to 365hz.

This is going to attenuate the high frequencies

and give the music a muffled sound

when the paused snapshot is called.

The script which controls our paused menu

also controls the transition to these snapshots.

For more about snapshots and controlling them via script

see the information linked below.

Let's check this out and hear how it sounds.

Press escape.

And then press escape again to resume.

This is an example of how we can use

audio effects processing to convey information to

the player about the game state.