The speaker is supposed to be an invaluable tool for sound design and animation, curtailed to a token gesture, a promise of features yet to come, with no tools that are realistically useful outside the most basic functionality.

This is where the Overhauled Speaker addon comes and saves the day with its advanced functionality and opportunities for speeding up your production process, while also making it sound more realistic and accurate. This addon is seperated into 3 sections.

Master Speaker

This speaker’s use is for ambience on your scene, like the urban chatter outside or the light wind going through the forest’s crowns, or the croaking frogs around the lively mountain pond.

You can have as many variations or sound effects play in different locations at different frames, pitch, volume and so on.

Motion Speakers

This speaker is triggered by the motion of an object on its X, Y, Z axis for all types of locations. For instance you have a character dragging a box. Designing the sound for that takes tricky time, while here you can add the sound to the motion of the box moving, and it will self-correct the speed and pitch in a quick and easy manner.

Based on motion you can simulate startups of engines, increase in speed like wind, water or an object passing by (car, plane, train).

Animation Speaker

With an animation in place, like a walking animation, you can bind footstep sounds every time the character goes through that specific frame, and that can be repeated as many times you’d need to, while reacting dynamically to you changing that animation’s speed.

Based on specific frames of an animation you can set the sound to play on the frame of a footstep or the rustle of cloth or accessories; the splash of water on every droplet.

FAQ

Would a lot of unused speakers cause lag and memory bloat?

Theoretically if we're talking about tens of thousands. And if you do notice something like that, go to Orphan Data viewer in the Outliner and 'Purge' orphans.

My sound doesn’t play after I’ve added it.

• Remember to click Generate after any new changes to your speaker parameters.

How many speakers can I put in a scene?

• Latest successful test was with over 3500 speakers playing audio.

The .zip doesn’t install in Blender

• Please un-zip the archive and install the .py script.

How do I activate an addon?

• Use this 20 sec guide – https://youtu.be/wOv4oHO5Kqg
  

CHANGELOG

Speaker 1.2 (full version)

• Presets have been introduced to the different audio types as well as the defaults (which all share the same presets). The presets are saved to the addon so they’ll be available in any Blender project once added.
• Fixed a crash caused by setting the “audio sample duration” to zero when using looping, by preventing a value of zero being set in the first place (since an audio sample of no length is impossible anyway).
• Removed the misleading ability to animate attenuation and distance. These were left by mistake and would never actually affect the audio if they were animated.

VIDEO DOCUMENTATION

Default Speaker

Speaker – The speaker is used to play sound in the 3D environment. After adding and selecting the Speaker you will be given different settings that are in its Properties.

Open – Choose what sound you’d like to add to the speaker.

Cache – Caches sounds for faster playbacks. The longer the sound, memory it’d take. Use mainly for often-used sounds.

Mono – The sound will only play on one channel. This can negatively impact a sounds with Stereo composition.

Volume – How loud the sound is.

Pitch – Used to make the sound deeper or higher. Useful for adding variation to a sound.

Playback time – You have to open the NLA Editor and add Sound strips that can target when the sound should play once or multiple times.

Distance

Volume – Minimum/Maximum – If the speaker is closer or further, the distance-based volume will not play louder or lower than the max/min volumes.

Attenuation – How much the distance affects the volume.

Distance – Maximum – If the speaker is further than this set distance then this distance is used to calculate the distance-based volume.

Cone – The cone is situated on top of the speaker with a full 360 degree angle. The cone has an inner cone with max volume and an outer cone which’s volume is controlled by the Outer volume.

Angle – Outer – Control the angle of the outer cone. Outside the cone, the volume is equal to the Outer volume.

Inner – Control the angle of the inner cone. The volume is maxed inside the cone.

Volume – Outer – Controls the volume outside of outer cone.

Universal Settings

Clear Scene Speakers – Deletes all speakers from the scene.

Generate – Generates a Speaker or refreshes new parameters on an already existing speaker. Any new change to an existing Speaker’s parameters has to be implemented by using the Generate button upon the selected speaker in the list.

Clear – Deletes the selected speaker in the list.

List Actions – Use the + to add an empty index for creating a speaker via the Generate button. Use the – to remove any selected index from the list. Up arrow moves a selected index up. Down arrow mvoes a selected index down.

Toggle Solo – Play only that selected speaker, no matter how many more are active.

Random – Randomly plays the selected index on the same frame as another index. For this to work the indexes must be on the same frame.

Mute – Mutes the selected sound.

Open – Choose what sound you’d like to add to the speaker.

Frame – Select which frame the sound will play at.

Offset – Based on the selected Frame, have the sound play earlier or later.

Override Defaults – Override the speaker information set in the Master Defaults

World Speaker

Looping – If enabled, this sound will trigger multiple times

Loops Gap – After how many frames the sound repeats, starting from the first frame it triggers.

Loop Count – How many times the sound should loop. If ‘0’, it will loop through until the End frame

Random Offset – Based on the selected Frame, have the sound play earlier or later.

Motion Speaker

Duration – How long the sound effects lasts for in frames. Any audio after this point will be muted. This is used when calculating the ‘fading out

Location – Change in X, Y, Z location  drives the audio.

Rotation – Change in X, Y, Z rotation  drives the audio.

Scale – Change in X, Y, Z scale  drives the audio.

Drive Volume – The transform velocity affects the volume of the sound

Drive Pitch – The transform velocity affects the pitch of the sound

Range

Max Volume – The volume of this sound when the velocity is at maximum.\nWhen ‘Drive Volume’ is disabled, this sets the volume of the audio

Min Volume – The volume of this sound when the velocity is at zero

Max Pitch – The pitch of this sound when the velocity is at maximum.\nWhen ‘Drive Pitch’ is disabled, this sets the pitch of the audio

Min Pitch – The pitch of this sound when the velocity is at zero

Max Velocity Cap – The fastest velocity handled: anything faster is handled as 100%

Min Velocity Cap – The slowest velocity handled: anything slower is handled as 0%