Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool - XACT Terminology and File Types

XACT Terminology and File Types

• Sound Banks (.xsb) - a collection of sounds and cues.
  • Sounds - a sound has one or more waves together with properties like volume and pitch. Sounds are made up of tracks.
    • Tracks - tracks are made up of events E.g. the simplest track has a Play Wave event
    • Events - various actions that take place within a track. Actions include: Play, Stop, Set Volume, Set Pitch etc.
  • Cues - a cue is used in code to trigger sounds. Each cue is made up of one or more sounds
• Wave Banks (.xwb) - a file format containing a collection of waves
  • Waves - the raw wave data in wav, aiff or xma format
• Global Settings (.xgs) - defines rules and settings for sounds.
  • Categories - sounds can be assigned to a category (only one each) that specifies certain rules like number of instances along with settings like volume. You could create a category for the sounds of one character in your game so they all have the same volume. There are three predefined categories: global, default and Music.
  • Variables - these can be defined in the design stage and then referenced by the programmer in code to control Run-Time Parameter Controls
    • Run-Time Parameter Controls - also known as 'sliders'. These allow the control of sound parameters as the sound plays. For example they could be used to control the pitch of a car engine sound so as the accelerator is pressed the pitch is changed
  • DSP Effect Path Presets (DSPs) - allow effects like reverb to be applied to sounds
  • Compression Presets - compression can be applied to waves or wave banks