The Meta XR Audio SDK Plugin for Wwise is now only supported via the Wwise Launcher and AudioKinetic website. The plugin will no longer receive updates on the Meta Developer Center. We strongly encourage users to onboard to the Wwise Launcher plugin using the documentation linked below:
- Meta XR Audio SDK for Unity⁠
- Meta XR Audio SDK for Unreal⁠

This documentation will no longer be updated and will be managed on AudioKinetic's website instead.

Overview

This section will cover how to install the Meta XR Audio SDK and prepare a project to use it.

By the end of this document, you’ll be able to:

Install Wwise

Download the Meta XR Audio SDK for Wwise

Install the Meta XR Audio SDK for your Wwise project or engine

Setup your Wwise project to use the Meta XR Audio sink plugin

Prerequisites

Windows 10/11

Install the Wwise Launcher application

The first step to get started using the Meta XR Audio SDK plugin for Wwise is to install the AudioKinetic launcher app from their website⁠. You can then use this Wwise Launcher app to install the right version of Wwise after creating and registering an AudioKinetic account.

As of this writing, the following SDK versions are used when compiling our plug-in:

Wwise 2023.1.0.8367

Wwise 2022.1.1.8100

Wwise 2021.1.4.7707

We also test the plug-in works in the latest version of Wwise for each release.

When installing, all you need is the Authoring package for the plug-in to work. See screenshot below:

Download the Meta XR Audio SDK plug-in

You’ll also need to download the Wwise plug-in from the Meta Horizon Developer Center. The download contains a pre-built plug-in binary for all the supported platforms (Windows, Mac and Android/Quest) and for each of the major releases of Wwise versions we support.

Once downloaded, extract the .zip to a local folder on your machine.

Move the plug-in to the right location

To install the plug-in such that the Wwise authoring app can find and use it while authoring sound banks, you need to move the DLL and XML file from “\download folder\/Wwise\version\/x64/bin/Plugins/” to the plug-in folder of the Wwise authoring GUI, replacing \download folder\ with the path to where you unzipped the download and \version\ with the Wwise version you wish to use.

To find the plug-in folder for the Wwise authoring app on Windows:

Open the Wwise Launcher and click the Wwise tab.

Click the wrench next to the version of Wwise you wish to install the Meta XR Audio Spatializer, and select Open Containing folder. See the screenshot below:

From there, navigate to the “Wwise version\Authoring\x64\Release\bin\Plugins” folder that contains all of the other plugins and move the DLL and XML files mentioned above to that location.

The plug-in folder for the Wwise authoring app can be found at the following path on Mac:

/Library/Application Support/Audiokinetic/Wwise version/Authoring/x64/Release/bin/Plugins/

Note: You need the DLL when using the Wwise authoring app on Windows and on Mac because on Mac the Wwise authoring app runs in Wine, a Windows compatibility layer. For more more information on Wine, see the Wine website⁠.

Install Unreal Engine

The first step to get started using the Meta XR Audio SDK plugin for Unreal is to install the Unreal Engine using the Epic Games Launcher. Epic Games provides a full set of instructions on how to set up and account and navigate to the download for your desired version here⁠.

The minimum Unreal Engine version that we support for this plugin is:

Unreal Engine 5.1.1

We also test the plug-in works in the latest version of Unreal for each release. The plugin may work in versions earlier in than the minimum version, but there is no support provided for that use case.

Add MetaXRAudio plugin to a project or Unreal Engine

The downloaded SDK package contains a sub-folder titled “Unreal” and inside it the plugin is found at “MetaXRAudio”. You can either copy the plugin to “UnrealEnginePath\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace" to add it to your engine and make it available to all projects, or copy it to “YourProjectPath\Plugins” to make it available only to a specific project.

Note that you should not install the plugin for both the engine and a project as this is not recommended by Epic Games. Also note that you should not have multiple instances of different Meta audio plugins both active. For example, don’t install both the Meta XR Audio Wwise for Unreal plugin and the Meta XR Audio FMOD for Unreal plugin at the same time.

Activate MetaXRAudio plugin in a project

In your Unreal project, the first thing to do is activate the Meta XR Audio plugin so that it becomes available for usage. Navigate to edit > plugins and find the Meta XR Audio plugin in the list of available plugins as shown below and make sure it is checked:

Unreal plugin settings with Meta XR Audio plugin activated.

You may need to restart the editor for this change to take effect.

Repackaing for a different version of Unreal Engine

The plugin is always pre-built with the latest version of Unreal Engine. When you try to load the plugin in an earlier version of Unreal, it will recognize the difference and ask if you want to rebuild the plugin for this version. In most cases you can confirm this and it will automatically rebuild without issue. If it fails to automatically repackage the plugin for your version you can run the following script included in the Unreal Engine to repackage it:

C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.3\Engine\Build\BatchFiles\RunUAT.bat BuildPlugin -plugin="C:\Downloads\MetaXRAudio\MetaXRAudio.uplugin" -package="C:\temp\MetaXRAudio"

In the above command make sure the path to the RunUAT.bat file matches the version of the Unreal Engine you’d like to package for, the plugin arguement matches the path to the MetaXRAudio.uplugin file on your directory, and the package arguement is a valid output path to place the result at.

Implementation

Your needs may vary, but this section walks through the most basic setup of a Wwise project using the Meta XR Audio SDK plug-in for Wwise such that you can get mono object rendering, third-order (or lower) ambisonic, and passthrough (i.e. headlocked stereo) set up in your project, and hear output from your computers audio device. There are numerous other tutorials on how to use Wwise on the Wwise website. There’s tons of videos⁠, samples⁠ and documentation⁠ that go way more in depth than what’s covered here.

The authoring plug-in (and the sound engine plug-in) grab the default audio device of the system on which they’re run. This means that before you create any instances of the plug-in (i.e. load any Wwise audio projects that use the sink plug-in or add the sink plug-in to your project for the first time), you should:

Make sure your OS’s default device is set to the audio device you’d like to use for the duration of your Wwise session or game.

Set your default audio device’s sampling rate to 48kHz.

Create a new project

Once your computer’s default audio device is configured correctly, launch the version of the Wwise authoring app into which you installed the plug-in and create a new project. No special settings are required. Title it anything, put it anywhere. In the screenshot below we added the Mac and Android platform because those are all the platforms the plug-in supports. We’ve also de-selected all the factory assets because we won’t need them in this simple tutorial.

If you’ve not registered a license to use the authoring app, you’ll get a warning about it. Be sure you’re properly licensed with Audiokinetic. You can learn more about licensing Wwise for use in your game at the Audiokinetic website⁠.

Add the Meta XR Audio sink plug-in as the master audio bus’s audio device

In the left-hand side of the Wwise app window, go to Project Explorer > Audio. Expand Default Work Unit of the Master-Mixer Hierarchy to reveal Master Audio Bus. This is the last bus that audio hits prior being sent out to the device, which is the Meta XR Audio Endpoint Sink.

Double click Master Audio Bus to pull up a tabbed component to the right with a General Settings tab.

Navigate to that tab where the current audio device in use is displayed. Click on >> to the right of where the audio device is shown.

Add a new Meta XR Audio Endpoint Sink plug-in.

When asked where to place the audio device in the Audio Devices hierarchy, the default location is fine for the purpose of this guide. Click Ok.

Once you’ve added the device, you can double click on it’s entry in the Project Explorer’s “Audio” to reveal its parameters. For a full description of the parameters, their meanings and use, see the parameter reference page.

Add child audio busses to the master audio bus for the passthrough, ambisonic, and object audio streams

First we’ll set up the passthrough bus to which we can route all stereo content that should bypass spatial rendering.

In the Project Explorer, right click Master Audio Bus entry.

Go to “Add Child” and select audio bus.

Double click that newly added child bus in the Project Explorer’s Audio tab. We’ve called this new bus “Passthrough” in the image below.

In its General Settings tab, you’ll see there’s a Bus Configuration setting. Since this is the passthrough bus, we’ll set the bus configuration to “Same As Passthrough” which will set it’s format to whatever the passthrough format of the currently active audio device (which is our endpoint plug-in).

Our plug-in configures it’s passthrough stream to be stereo, so effectively we’re setting this bus to be a stereo bus but what’s different is that audio from this bus will be sent to the endpoint sink plug-in as stereo data and will be rendered as such (i.e. no spatialization).

Similarly, we create a new child bus for the ambisonic stream. Instead of “Same as passthrough mix”, we set its bus configuration to “Same as main mix”. Like the passthrough bus, the audio routed to this bus will be sent to the endpoint as ambisonic data and will be rendered (but this time, spatially) as such.

Finally, add an object bus like the previous two except that it’s bus configuration should be “Audio Objects”. Audio routed to this bus will have its channels split apart and fed to the endpoint plug-in as mono objects and, if associated with a game object that has a position not at the origin, each channel will be rendered separately.

Of course you could have child busses of the above busses for a more advanced bus management scheme.

Note: Effects added to an object bus will be applied per-object and as such, are instantiated for every object passed to the object bus which could eat into the CPU budget, so take care.