Lumberyard's method of handling in-game audio is a bit complex. Audio assets are not created in Lumberyard; they are created using the Wwise software. Wwise is an acronym for Wave Works Interactive Sound Engine by Audiokinetic. There are two versions of Wwise: a full, for-pay, version and a free, lite, Wwise LTX version.

Game audio works through collaboration and communication between Lumberyard, the Audio Transition Layer, and Wwise. When an in-game event requiring audio is triggered, Lumberyard notifies, using the Audio Transition Layer, the audio middleware to play the sound. The following diagram graphically illustrates a high-level view of the audio system pipeline:

Lumberyard's audio pipeline might seem unnecessarily complex, especially when compared to how other game engines implement their audio systems. This complexity results in great efficiencies and mitigates frustrations due to frequent changes. To explain, since the Audio Transition...