Reflected AudioUtil class for making audio based Editor Extensions

Hi guys,
I've been working on an editor extension recently that required the ability to play/pause/stop and get waveforms of various AudioClips within the editor. I wanted the cleanest way of doing this possible (so no creating hidden GameObjects etc) so I went searching online, and found this thread.

So, after shamelessly stealing A Shim.3D's code snippet there, I wrote a method to find all the static methods in that AudioUtil class, and started using that code to get access to the ones I needed.
The end result is this, AudioUtility.cs. It has every public static method from AudioUtil available in it. Hopefully some other people will be able to get some use out of these features too!

Simply copy it into your project, and import the "UnityEditor" namespace in your script to use it.

Cheers!

 

Thank you soooo much! I am working on a new editor for a rhythm game and this is amazingly helpful!

 

No problem, glad someone has some use for it

 

I am having an issue with starting a song at a specific point. It seems to always start at the beginning. Is this a bug, or am I not using it properly?

Code (CSharp):

1. AudioUtility.PlayClip(song.song, songStart, false);

Where song.song is an Audioclip and songStart is a value between 0 and AudioUtility.GetSampleCount()

 

Unfortunately that does seem to be a bug, I haven't had any luck getting that to work either. I included them in the class anyway just in case Unity fixes it in future.

The best solution I've got so far is just playing it normally, then using SetClipSamplePosition straight afterwards. Seems to work just as well, but it's not quite as clean.

 

I didn't even think to try that. That works perfect.

 

1. Code (CSharp):

   1.   sampleStart = (int)Math.Ceiling (audioClip.samples * ((__sequence.timeCurrent - node.startTime) / audioClip.length));//do your calculation
   2.                    
   3.                                  AudioUtilW.PlayClip (audioClip, 0, node.loop);//startSample doesn't work in this function????
   4.                                                              AudioUtilW.SetClipSamplePosition (audioClip, sampleStart);

Problem that I couldn't solve was with Stop and StopAll not working when you have started more clips to play at once. Seem stoping last one only.

 

Yeah, I've come across similar problems (though only in Unity 5) with clips playing. It also sometimes breaks altogether for me, and stops the Unity editor from playing any audio at all until it's restarted. Unfortunately, I suppose this is stuff we just have to put up with unless Unity decides to make the AudioUtil class public and supports it.

 

Or some Unity inhous developer tell us about secret sauce. . I notice that above happen even in Unity Audio Inspector where they use StopAll. You can play some sound outside and thru Audio Inspector in parallel. Then try to StopAll... I've played Vidoe Sound and play good when not played in parallel with some other sound then sample gone crazy.

 

Hello. I greatly appreciate your sharing AudioUtility.cs!

I use this for drawing wave-form of audioclip and play audio like preview window.

However, in unity5.4, getting wave-form texture method disappear!
If you know how to easily draw wave-form of audioclip without GetWaveFormFast() , please tell me..

 

3 years later and this still helps, once the few quirks are known (can't stop an audio when multiple are played, "start sample" is basically useless but SetClipSamplePosition fixes it, etc...) your class is really helpful, thanks !

 

This is great! Is there a way to change the playback volume, though?

 

Hi, has anyone reflected AudioUtil.cs for 2019.x? Seems like there are some changes and code above does not work. Or parts of it do not work. Thank you, Marek.

 

I haven't really updated this in a long time - I switched to using a hidden GameObject with an AudioSource on a long time ago (round about when Unity 5 was new I think) because of problems with sounds refusing to stop and then cutting out entirely! They also removed the waveform texture methods in 5.5 or 5.6 I think. You're better off going with the GameObject method these days - you can set its hideFlags from a script so it doesn't get saved with your scene or show up in the hierarchy.

 

also, should anyone else be puzzled for the first time on this, you have to get the percentage of where you want to play based on the number of samples in the clip.

Example:
I want to play at a position that's 50% of the way through the clip:

First, get the number of samples:

var samples = AudioUtility.GetSampleCount(source.clip);

Then, simply multiply your percentage against that:

int playFrom = Mathf.FloorToInt(samples * 0.5f);

Then, use it together:

Code (CSharp):

1. AudioUtility.PlayClip(source.clip, playFrom, false);
2. AudioUtility.SetClipSamplePosition(source.clip, playFrom);

As a side note, I simply added this line to the 2 PlayClip() methods in AudioUtility.cs to just have it do it for me

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. public static void PlayClip(AudioClip clip, int startSample, bool loop)
3. {
4.     Assembly unityEditorAssembly = typeof(AudioImporter).Assembly;
5.     Type audioUtilClass = unityEditorAssembly.GetType("UnityEditor.AudioUtil");
6.     MethodInfo method = audioUtilClass.GetMethod(
7.         "PlayClip",
8.         BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.Public,
9.         null,
10.         new System.Type[] {
11.         typeof(AudioClip),
12.         typeof(Int32),
13.         typeof(Boolean)
14.     },
15.     null
16.     );
17.     method.Invoke(
18.         null,
19.         new object[] {
20.         clip,
21.         startSample,
22.         loop
23.     }
24.     );
25.  
26.     SetClipSamplePosition(clip, startSample);
27. }
28.  
29. public static void PlayClip(AudioClip clip, int startSample)
30. {
31.     PlayClip(clip, startSample, false);
32. }
33.  
34. public static void PlayClip(AudioClip clip)
35. {
36.     PlayClip(clip, 0, false);
37. }
38.  

[UPDATE] It seems that in 2019.x the other 2 PlayClip methods are broken, so I've updated my classes to the above. Works great!

Have a bandit day!

 

In Unity 2020.2 they changed the method names so "Clip" becomes "PreviewClip", for example "PlayPreviewClip", "IsPreviewClipPlaying", etc.

https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...Mono/Audio/Bindings/AudioUtil.bindings.cs#L30

Also, when invoking the method the null should come after the object, I think.

Code (CSharp):

1. return (bool)method.Invoke(
2.                 new object[] {
3.                     clip
4.                 },
5.                 null
6.             );

 

This is working really great. But is there a way to set the volume?

 

Gave up on this in the end due to unreliability.

 

Yes, Unity, please give use exposed API. Thank you.

 

I am also looking for a way to control volume through this. Here is the AudioUtil class, and it doesn't look like there is a way.

 

Unity changed AudioTool. Now for it to work, you need to change, for example, “PlayClip” to “PlayPreviewClip”, “StopAllClips” to “StopAllPreviewClips”, “SetClipSamplePosition” to “SetPreviewClipSamplePosition”, etc. (yes I know I just paraphrased what people said above)

Full list here: https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...tor/Mono/Audio/Bindings/AudioUtil.bindings.cs