MetaSounds: Exciting new procedural audio opportunities in Unreal Engine 5

Epic Games yesterday put their Unreal Engine 5 on display with an honestly breathtaking Early Access video, which you can find linked below.

One of the interesting new features was the introduction of MetaSounds, Epic’s latest addition to their node-based programming toolkit for developers.

Node-based workflows

If you’re familiar with Blueprints, Unreal Engine’s gameplay visual scripting system, or have worked with any other application with a node-based workflow – such as Houdini or Nuke – you’ll know the benefits include having a production pipeline that allows for randomised variation, quick iteration and the ability to affordably make changes in late stages of the production.

Procedural Audio

MetaSounds addressed many of the problems faced by audio designers working with Sound Cues in UE4, such as the need to create individualised ADSR envelopes, the inability to handle sample-accurate timing, or the challenge of creating procedural audio.

What can we anticipate developers will make with these new tools? Well for one, there are application to sound design and music production – some of the new tools we have been graced with include in-engine audio synthesis. Woop woop!

Other perhaps less exciting opportunities, but arguably far more important for improving game experience through immersion, include automating randomised footsteps and gunfire, and ambient sounds like wind.

How will this in the long term affect middleware solutions such as FMOD and Wwise, who already provide procedural audio tools remains to be seen.

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