What is "CRI Audio "?
CRI Audio enables sound designers to create, audition and manage sounds, and programmers to easily playback those managed banks. Not only does CRI Audio improve workflow during the production of a game, it streamlines production and reduces production costs.
| 2008-04-11 | - "CRI Audio" Introduction Video is uploaded. Click to play . |
CRI Audio’s foundation is a software synthesizer that supports multiple platforms. This enables the exact same sound to be reproduced on all Next-Gen platforms: PLAYSTATION®3, Xbox360™, Wii™ and on PCs.
CRI’s unique high-quality / SPE based decompression technology allows in excess of 100 sounds (voices) to be played back simultaneously on the PS3. This enables a vast quantity of different sounds (voices) to be processed in real-time. A variety of control parameters are also available to manipulate tracks during playback.
CRI Audio also takes full-advantage of each platforms signature hardware. On the PLAYSTATION3, for example, digital signal processing is carried out on the SPE, which means that the PPE - or main CPU - is available for your game. On the Xbox360, approximately 100 sounds can be processed simultaneously on a single CPU core and on the Wii, hardware acceleration is used directly to increase performance.
CRI Audio's unique technology, AISAC*, allows the audio designer to build dynamic sounds that vary in both pitch and amplitude over time. Sounds such as an engine responding to its acceleration or the cheering of an audience when the game heats up. Indeed, so much real-time audio is possible by using AISAC.
In addition, footsteps, explosions, gunshots and a wide variety of other effects have been designed to help jump-start development. This aids in getting distance delay / roll-off curves up-and-running quickly to produce an even greater heightened sense of realism.
With our comprehensive tool suite, the sound designer can intuitively adjust the playback control parameters in the design tool.
This enables a data-driven process of trial and error where the sound designer can repeatedly audition sounds.
Programmers can then take this data, and manipulate it real-time by specifying simple control parameters.
*AISAC = Advanced Interactive Sound and Active Controller
CRI Audio has been built from a foundation of CRI’s award winning ADX streamer. Even when reading monstrous amounts of streamed data, CRI Audio efficiently manages buffers and controls data flow. This is especially efficient when used with optical media.
CRI Audio also extends it's asynchronous file system to the game developer, now developer can load-level data seamlessly while streaming audio or one-shot audio.
CRI Audio also gives you an edge in organizing and playing back both one-shot and streaming audio data. Whether a game has 1,000 or 100,000 sounds, CRI Audio enables the efficient auditioning, management and playback of audio assets for all next-gen gaming platforms.
It is possible to adjust a full range of playback control parameters while previewing vast quantities of sound data on PC. The system is also equipped with a common-interface authoring tool that does not differentiate between platforms. Batch processing with the console tool is also possible.
(2) 3-D Surround Authoring Function
The 3-D position of the sound can be set up simply by specifying the angle and distance.
Sound can also be directed to a specific speaker, such as outputting dialogue to the center speaker and bass tones to the sub-woofer, etc.
(3) Random Sound Fully Supported to Enable Probability Distribution Settings
The AISAC enables random sound probability distribution to be adjusted with a graph. All of the playback control parameters, including volume, pitch, filter and 3-D positioning, can be controlled randomly.
This enables a wide variety of different sounds to be produced from a single sound source (waveform data).
PLAYSTATION is the registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.
Xbox, Xbox Live, the Xbox Live logo and the Xbox logo are the registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation registered in the United States of America and other nations.
Wii is the trademark of Nintendo Co., Ltd.
CRI Middleware, the CRI Middleware logo, CRI Audio and CRIWARE are the trademarks or registered trademarks of CRI Middleware Co., Ltd. registered in Japan and other nations.