How can I see the performance impacts of audio effects?

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  • Hey all,

    I'm experimenting with audio effects like convolution. However, I've read that effects like this are often quite costly performance-wise.

    Is there a good way to measure or just get an indication of how expensive certain convolutions are, when applied to every sound effect in the game?

    Thanks!

    Daniel

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  • My understanding of the audio system is that each 'tag' has its own effects chain, thus making each tag a separate 'track', so to speak.

    So, if you ganged together most of your sfx under a single tag "sfx", even an expensive effect like convolution should be pretty cheap.

    FYI, audio effects are generally very efficient, and run in a separate thread from the main game, so they shouldn't really cause slowdown. Convolution is probably the heaviest effect in WebAudio outside of a really high rez fft; most everything else would barely register unless you are targeting mobile.

    IIRC, the length of the convolution impulse sample will determine the cost of the effect; longer sample, more cpu.

    Slightly OT: Oh, and don't use the Doppler effect; it's been depreciated: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.or ... 1SI1GoHYO8

  • TiAm thanks!

    It's not really practical for me to have all sfx under one tag since I need to do dynamic volume stuff in a few places.

    It's nice to hear that they are processed in another thread - I guess that means I don't really need to worry? I'm not targeting mobile.

  • sqiddster

    Yes, you probably don't need to worry, should be able to get away with quite a few 'tags'.

    However, I'd recommend doing some experiments in lieu of speculation, because I haven't used WebAudio convolution myself. I'm simply projecting from my knowledge of how the effect works in a daw environment, and my experiments with other aspects of WebAudio. It's generally very fast and efficient, comparable to native audio processing.

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