New Audio API [Beta]: Elevate Sound and Voice in Your Experiences

Just what we needed! I can’t wait for it to be ln the Roblox Client and see what developers are doing with it!

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Yes finally! Can’t wait to play around with radios!

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Revolutionary audio improvements, I was really waiting for this update!

Though, I would like to look into the future, and ask when we can expect improvements to audio such as the “Geometric Audio Absorption”, which was shown in Roblox Hack Week of 2020, or at least I would like to know if it’s possible that something like this will be implemented in near future?

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If that were to happen, wouldn’t people just break the rules with it by making it say harmful words?

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Will it ever be possible to use voice chat without a Player.Character set?

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Will it be possible to use the new Audio Api with the Volumetric Audio? Right now it doesn’t seem to work with it enabled. Here is what i am talking about:

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This is super cool, and a lot more sophisticated for sure. I love that we can finally add effects voice chat.

Although this is a bit confusing, will all the new APIs coexist with the old Sound instances? Thats what I would assume, since adding an audio player, fader, emitter and wire for every sound we want to play seems a bit annoying.

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We’ve been using this in My Movie and it’s alright. They will sometimes play through muted volumes but I can’t figure out a repro case for it.

However, there doesn’t appear to be any options for custom rolloff. This is problematic as there is no scenario in my games where I don’t want to control this. Without it, sounds blend in with each other in a realistic, but extremely overwhelming manner. With old Sounds, I could just tweak some settings. With the new APIs, I now need scripts and Heartbeat loops to do the same thing. Can we get these back?

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I would actually love an option like “LimitsEnabled” on some constraints to gain back the Maximum and Minimum rolloff feature of the Sound instances.

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This is awesome! This gives so much more control and abilities to create immersive experiences!

One question though - are the now “legacy” Sounds ever planned to be deprecated, or will they forever be kept up-to-date as a “easier way to handle sound in Roblox”? I definitively seee the use for the new system but I also definitively see the use case of the old one (e.g. basic simulators)

Thank you!

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Why does muting players using the menu change their AudioDeviceInput.Active rather than using AudioDeviceInput.Muted ?

If you mute a player that is not using their mic AudioDeviceInput.Active wont change while AudioDeviceInput.Muted would which would give more control of what you can do if a player ( which was most likely annoying ) was muted by the client

AudioDeviceInput.Active is controlled by Core UI elements, while AudioDeviceInput.Muted is publicly scriptable – we didn’t want developers to be able to unmute on your behalf, which is why they’re separate & stacked – i.e. Muted or not Active means not making any sound

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This is great, now I can make a viewportframe television with audio

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I understand that but the issue atm at least on my end is that if you mute somebody that has AudioDeviceInput.Active set to off the client wont print anything ( since nothing was done ) , this makes it hard to make an improved “block” button which hides players if you have them muted using the menu since they can “unmute” themselves anytime, having some sort of “muted on client” property would be sweet

Tldr; having anything that tells if a player was muted using the menu (client) would be very useful!

Awesome update! Will this allow for Voice Chat to be increased above 50 players?

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Yeah, this is a problem for my projects too. It is also quite hacky to be having to implement custom roll-off by undoing Roblox’s internal volume changes instead of just changing the volume directly, and the official sample code seems a little bit suspicious from a numerical precision standpoint (since there is potential for a division by zero, though hopefully in most cases that won’t be a problem).

Also, the sample code given on the AudioEqualizer page to implement custom roll off doesn’t account for the engine’s internal roll off, so it’s not very helpful for that purpose (I guess the voice chat sample code given in the OP also needs to be applied there, using an AudioFader?).

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So let’s say, hypothetically, what if every bird in our games were actually government spy drones?

Though jokes aside, i really appreciate we are finally getting these sorts of audio features (even though i would have to say those should have been released a bit more closely to the release of voice chat).
However i do have one nitpick that i have with many other audio systems outside of roblox too… That being the fact that pitch shifting just sucks! I’m not sure about the entire details of why it does, but most software seem to have some really poor pitch shifting that either takes ages to compile (for still poor quality) or just straight up butchers the entire audio. I have seen game’s and even some mobile apps capable of proper real time pitch shifting without any sort of audio degradation and artifacting. Would it be possible to have some proper pitch shifting (that wont nuke audio quality) on roblox too?

Also, i’ve noticed there are no volume properties for any of the new instances?? Why is this such basic and crucial feature missing? (I think i found it?)

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will we be getting more control over audiolistener? im making a game where sounds will be blocked by walls, this would require me to raycast to the source once audiolistener detects a sound before letting it pass, which is currently not possible

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Any plans for creating thorough video tutorials for this? I’ve been looking at the API for hours but can’t make any sense out of it.

AudioEmitter… AudioPlayer the terms tend to look alike a bit. And there’s a ton of instances to go through.

Then there’s also the uncertainty of how to handle using out-of-the-box instances that come with spawning new players, since you’ll get these when starting a new playsession.


It would be amazing to get thorough documentation for best practices on how to utilize these.

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I liked that this update will definitely make playing true stereo sound on Roblox much better with better audio management system and more synchronized approach.

Honestly this would be better if this update also includes an update to Roblox Audio Engine itself such as HRTF and 3D surround audio support like Minecraft does since mid-2022.

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