AudioLink Setup

Setting up AudioLink is a bit more complicated than setting up other features, because the settings are not all in one place.

This guide will go through the basic steps to get AudioLink working.

Step 1: Enable the Main AudioLink Settings

Go to the "Special -> AudioLink" tab and enable the Install AudioLink Module and Master Enable options, here:

I recommend leaving all the various sliders at their defaults for now. Once you get AudioLink working you can come back and experiment with them to see what they do!

If you want to reset a slider to its default, you can right-click on its name to bring up a context menu that has a reset option:

Alternatively, if you want to reset all properties in the AudioLink tab at once, you can right-click on the tab:

Step 2: Enable the Test Colours

To make things easier to troubleshoot, temporarily enable Show Test Colours:

This will create fake AudioLink data that will light up the layers, without actually needing to be in a world that supports AudioLink.

Step 3: Enable AudioLink in the Emission Map and/or Decals

In this example I'll enable AudioLink for the emission map (in "Lighting -> Emission"), but the same steps apply to decals (in "Material -> Decals").

I'll need to enable the emission map first, by selecting Enable Emission, then Install Emission Map, and then Enable Emission Map:

At this point, if you haven't actually added an emission map yet, your entire avatar will start glowing bright white. That's because the emission is being applied everywhere.

In fact, if you try to turn on AudioLink by enabling AudioLink Reactive, you probably won't be able to see it yet, because the brightness of the emission map is overpowering the AudioLink colours:

The solution is to turn down the brightness of your emission map, so that it's not already glowing super-bright.

With the strength of the emission map turned down, the glow of the AudioLink colours becomes visible:

Step 4: Adding a Texture

At this point your avatar should be strobing red, green, and blue, which shows that AudioLink is working.

However, you probably don't want it flashing everywhere, so you will need to add a texture to the Emission Map slot.

In my case, I've made a texture that is only white where my arm bands are. Applying this texture to the Emission Map slot results in the red/green/blue strobing only affecting my arm bands:

Step 5: Choose a Mapping Method

By default, the colour of your emission map (including any alpha transparency) will be multiplied by the AudioLink band colours that are selected for each of the 4 audio bands (ie. Bass, Low-Mid, High-Mid, and Treble):

Using these default settings, AudioLink will glow blue for bass notes, red for low-mid notes, and green for high-mid notes.

This default mapping method works well if your emission map is white, and it also supports alpha transparency. However, if your emission map is something other than white then it will act as a colour filter. That means that the AudioLink colours will not be visible if they don't match the colour of your emission map closely enough.

Fortunately, there are 5 other mapping options that allow you to map the AudioLink band colours directly to the RGBA channels of your emission map:

The bottom 4 options allow you to select just one of your emission map's colour channels (ie. RGBA) to control the strength of all the AudioLink colours directly. That means they won't apply any colour filtering, nor will they apply alpha transparency.

Choosing "Map Band Colours to RGBA Channels" is the most advanced option, and will map the AudioLink band colours to each RGBA channel in your emission map, as follows:

Emission Map Channel	AudioLink Band
Red	Bass Colour
Green	Low-Mid Colour
Blue	High-Mid Colour
Alpha	Treble Colour