We Were on Wwise Up On Air: Here's What Went Down

From the live session

A few weeks ago, Dhruv Jindal had the chance to sit down with Damian Kastbauer on Wwise Up On Air Community Tools Spotlight and walk through what we've been building with Malleant in a live session.

It ended up being one of the most enjoyable conversations we've had around the tool so far. And since a lot of people couldn't catch the stream live, we wanted to put together a written version of what we showed, what we talked about, and why we built Malleant the way we did.

The Problem That Started All of This

Every sound designer knows this feeling.

We are in the game, listening to a sound that's almost right. Maybe a weapon swing needs a little more crunch. Maybe a UI sound feels too flat. Maybe a pickup just needs a touch of distortion or EQ.

We already know the fix.

But making that tiny change usually means breaking our flow completely. We leave the game, open the DAW, search for the right session, render the file, reimport it into middleware, rebuild, test again… and somewhere in that process, the original creative instinct disappears.

That loop is what pushed us to build Malleant.

Not to replace the DAW, that's still where the real sound design work happens, but to close the gap between hearing the problem and actually fixing it.

What We Demoed Live

For the stream, we used a Unity project running the Wwise Adventure Game.

The goal was simple: turn a normal weapon swing into something that sounded like it came straight out of a 1980s Nintendo cartridge.

Inside Malleant, we pulled the event directly from the profiler, routed it into the plugin graph, dropped in a Bitcrusher, and started tweaking the sound live while the game was running.

No bouncing. No reimporting. No stopping playback.

Just real-time processing while hearing the sound exactly as it exists in-game.

Once it felt right, we exported it. Malleant automatically located the source files, printed the DSP chain onto them, renamed the assets, and reimported everything back into Wwise.

The whole thing took less than a minute.

That workflow clicked with people immediately because it solves something almost every game audio team runs into daily.

The Features That Quietly Save the Most Time

The real-time print workflow usually gets the spotlight, but during the session we also talked about a few features that quietly save teams hours every week.

Export Panel

The Export Panel ended up becoming far more flexible than we originally planned.

We can export back to original source folders, versioned folders, or a completely separate consolidated directory. We can process audio offline or record the live signal buffer, which also means upstream Wwise DSP can be baked into the render if needed.

For larger teams, built-in Perforce support handles P4 add and edit automatically. There's also normalization, fades, secondary-drive syncing for outsourcing workflows, and a bunch of smaller quality-of-life features that remove repetitive manual work from the pipeline.

Import Metrics

This part of the conversation shifted more toward QA and asset validation.

Before audio even enters Wwise, Malleant can batch-analyze files for things like LUFS, RMS, true peak, dynamic range, empty channels, double mono files, clipping, and format inconsistencies.

Anything that fails validation gets flagged automatically and can be moved into a virtual folder for review.

A lot of studios already solve these problems with custom scripts or manual checking, but having those checks integrated directly into the workflow changes how quickly teams can move.

Cleanup Tree

Every project eventually reaches the point where unused audio starts piling up everywhere.

The Cleanup Tree was built for exactly that phase of production.

We point it at a work unit, filter for unused sources or empty containers, and clean things out without manually digging through the project structure.

It's not the flashiest feature in the tool, but it's one people end up appreciating very quickly once projects start scaling up.

Why the Spotlight Meant So Much

Getting to show Malleant on Audiokinetic's platform was a huge moment for us.

What made the session especially meaningful was that the conversation wasn't only about features. Damian kept steering things toward the bigger workflow questions, why these bottlenecks exist in game audio pipelines in the first place, and why reducing iteration time matters creatively.

The response afterward was genuinely encouraging.

We heard from sound designers, technical audio folks, and audio directors across both indie and AAA teams who immediately recognized the pain points we were talking about. A lot of them had already built partial workarounds internally, which made it incredibly validating to see how universal these problems really are.

Especially while still being in beta.

Where Malleant Is Right Now

Malleant is currently on v1.8.1 with support for both Windows and macOS.

Since the first public beta launched in January, we've shipped ten updates and the tool has evolved massively from where it started. A lot of that direction has come directly from conversations with the community and teams actively testing it in real production environments.

If you missed the stream, you can watch the full session here: https://www.youtube.com/live/0eQ8MXLjaKY?si=9mHnUyNaRuTNTIZV

And if you want to try the beta yourself, visit app.freefallinterface.com.

Or just reach out directly at contact@freefallaudio.com — we're always happy to walk people through the workflow personally.

Malleant is a standalone tool. No runtime code ships with your game. No licensing headaches. Just a faster way to work with audio.

Conclusion:

Watch the Wwise Up On Air spotlight, try the free beta at app.freefallinterface.com, or email contact@freefallaudio.com and we'll walk you through the workflow.