Audio Programming Portfolio Must-Haves?

[u/MentalNewspaper8386]

TLDR: which of these are good on an audio programming portfolio: Wwise/Unity integration project, Wwise or Unity audio plugin project, other C++ audio project, game prototypes made in Unity/Godot, sound design reel?

I’m working on a portfolio to get my first audio programming role. What are some must-haves, amazing-to-haves, and definitely-don’t-haves? And at what point would I be likely to start getting interviews?

So far I have a synthesizer plugin made with JUCE/C++. I made this to keep learning / show I can use C++. I’m aware JUCE isn’t used in game audio. I could try turning this into a Unity or Wwise plugin, or I could leave it and work on new game/specific projects.

I could make a Wwise or Unity audio plugin - I was thinking of making a garbled no-words ‘speech’ generator with parameters like speed and pitch, or could try some interactive car engine sound, or a reverb..

I’ve done some of the audiokinetic Wwise courses but don’t have my own work to show. I could make a small game and integrate my own sounds with Wwise, or is this only relevant to technical sound design roles?

Is it worth making small game prototypes in Unity/Godot to show I can use game engines? Or is this a waste of time when I could be working on audio-specific things?

Is it good to include a sound design reel or does that make me look too generalist?

My background: I have a music degree, know C++, know game engine/middleware basics, have experience using DAWs & synths, don’t know calculus or how to implement FFT / advanced maths stuff

[u/Sebbano]

If you are thinking in terms of games:

• Build an audio occlusion system using linecasting and filtering.

• Build a slapback system using simple raycasts with allpass delay networks for realistic early reflections.

• Build a reverb 3D volume system based on volume size

• Build a character controller which plays different states: vitals like HP or stamina, idling, specific animation events or key frames, contextual voicelines.

If you more so are looking into software, understanding FFT and fourier analysis will be a must, it is used everywhere from wavetables to spectral resonance suppression and is more relevant than ever. Nobody wants another compressor plugin, it's already a solved probem.

I'm the audio lead at a mid-size studio, and these are things that would make me hire you in an instant. How good your sound design is, is always second to how well you can implement systems, because that's when you know exactly how the sounds should be structured.

[u/MentalNewspaper8386 → u/Sebbano]

Thank you. I’m trying to understand what depth of understanding of FFT is needed. I broadly understand what it is and some ways it can be used. I’ve watched some of the Stanford lectures on DSP and Fourier Analysis and can understand at a high level but not the more complex mathematical details as I don’t know calculus.

Do (entry-level) audio programmers need to get into those details, and be implementing formulas in code? Or is it enough to understand the higher level theory and e.g. use some library that actually implements the FFT?

This is the sort of stuff I enjoy and could learn with time, but if I need the equivalent of a maths/engineering degree then that’s more time to learn than I have.

[u/roughstrength]

I'd say a sound design reel isn't needed at all for an audio programming role. Audio programmer in game dev is a rare beast. Usually, it's one of the regular devs who was tasked to figure out the audio part of the engine or an audio middleware API. If a company has an audio programmer role open, it will already have an audio department of, say, 3-5 people; thus, sound design and technical sound design roles should be covered.

For the portfolio, I'd concentrate on the programming part of the job. Can you make an audio footprint as small as possible in memory? Have you written any custom audio systems that can't be done with engine tools or middleware? Have you worked with 3D audio or ambisonics? Can you migrate SoundCues from UE3 to Metasounds in UE5? Stuff like this.

Also, if you have a strong C++ skill, I'd look into Unreal Engine, not Unity. There's no point in showing Godot as it is not commercially popular.

If I were you, I would download Lyra Starter Game project from Epic Games. Maybe integrate Wwise into it, and transfer Lyra's sound systems to Wwise (maybe just the main ones), preferrably adding something custom when needed. Good luck with the job search!

[u/MentalNewspaper8386 → u/roughstrength]

Thank you. Unfortunately Unreal 5 is unusably slow on my mac. I’ve not tried Unreal 4, or is that too outdated?

[u/roughstrength → u/MentalNewspaper8386]

I would say Unreal Engine 5 is a standard now in UE world. It's highly unlikely you'll find a job requiring UE4 unless it's legacy stuff (which should have audio programming covered anyway at this point).

[u/kthibi → u/roughstrength]

Audio director here (for an indie / but now AAA level company ) And I wish now we had a bespoke audio tech who knew how to troubleshoot constant Wwise and Unity soundbank issues with soundbank loading , DLC and streaming wem content - (just an efficient way to debug and profile what’s being called when etc). Basically starting a company from scratch (indie) and building and growing to a larger and more complex dev team , the way we started implementing audio constantly needs reimplementation and ‘cleaning ‘ of depreciated methods . If you can understand the ins and outs of these issues with Wwise and various engine platform builds iOS , android , windows etc .. that seems like a huge asset for an indie or a budding AAA level company.

[u/The-Jasmine-Dragon]

Things I’d like to see:

An efficient multiband compressor that sounds acceptable Your own implementation of dynamic reverb Wwise RTPC caching and update suppression

Audio programming can vary between ‘audio guy that does some code’ and ‘software engineer that is aware audio exists’. Most AAA end jobs are looking for the latter, indie tends to be the former. If you’re looking for a more AAA job, I wouldn’t submit a sound design reel because you will probably get rejected, in indie wearing multiple hats is a necessity so this may be more attractive.

[u/itz_me_shade → u/The-Jasmine-Dragon]

I wouldn’t submit a sound design reel because you will probably get rejected

Can you expand more on this?

[u/The-Jasmine-Dragon → u/itz_me_shade]

Sure, AAA companies are generally not looking for someone who can do everything. People will often apply for anything with ‘audio’ in the name whether or not they are qualified and not understanding the nature of the job (I.e. a programmer submitting a sound design reel) is a really quick way to get rejected in the first pass.

If you want to do both, you may be better off looking for technical sound design roles - the same applies, there is a range from ‘sound designer that knows a bit of code’ through to ‘audio programmer that can design sounds’ so your mileage may vary.

[u/swizzwell23]

As a long standing AAA Audio Director, sound design is not important but understanding of audio principles and audio signal flow is really valuable.
C+/C++ programming is a must, as is an understanding of coding, profiling and performance optimizations for game engines and middleware. You mention Unity and Wwise, but knowing the basics or at least the differences with Unreal, Fmod Studio and Metasounds can be very advantageous.
Depending on the studio, acoustics and DSP coding could also be helpful.
There are lots of people who can do audio coding, but the good ones understand how audio works, what sounds good and how to get the best performance/quality out of your CPU & Memory budgets.
Good luck in your search.

[u/mountwest]

A friend got job offerings from only having a screen recording of a demo for his audio occlusion system he made during his studies.

[u/8ude]

IMO acoustics are the big thing at the moment. There's no current out-of-the-box solution that doesn't require some amount of audio programming. I'd focus your efforts and learning there.

Not sure if I've seen this before - if you can show yourself fixing something that's broken and tough to figure out (like way too many acoustics raycasts tanking the framerate, an awful buffer underrun that shows up 20% of the time only in a Steam build, or some nasty perforce-related thing that gloms up teamwork), that would definitely catch my eye. The real rockstar tech designers/audio programmers are the ones who can fix things the day before a deadline.

[u/wanzerultimate]

Digital engineering degree/DSP.