How can I see the performance impacts of audio effects?

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

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.