Elias vs Steam Audio SDK

Elias 4 is game-audio middleware and a sound engine for interactive soundscapes and adaptive music. Elias Studio gives composers and sound designers visual scripting for sample-perfect audio graphs combining logic, game parameters, playback, and DSP. Its music system supports instrument and track rules, motifs, stingers, automatic loops, random segments, and musical transitions. Spatialized 3D audio and processing such as filters, compressors, and reverbs are included. While a game runs, users can edit patches, replace sound files, and mix without rebuilding or using sound banks. Unity and Godot integrations are provided, and custom or other engines can be integrated. Listed runtime targets include PC, Mac, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, iOS, and Android. Elias is written in C and C++, supports Python tooling and automations, and offers source-code access by separate agreement at higher license tiers. Licenses are per game; console releases cost extra per platform, while same-game DLC is covered. Explorer Standard costs €5,850, paid once, and Colonizer Premium costs €15,000, paid once. A free evaluation version is available by request.

Steam Audio SDK is a free toolkit for adding spatial audio to games and VR/AR apps. It renders positional audio binaurally using HRTFs to model sound direction relative to the listener. Environmental features include physics-based sound propagation, occlusion, reflections and reverb. The SDK can spatialize Ambisonics audio and rotate it with listener orientation, and developers can provide HRTFs in AES SOFA format. Multicore CPUs and supported GPUs can accelerate environmental simulation and rendering. Listed integrations include Unity, Unreal Engine, FMOD Studio, Wwise and a C API. The C API is intended for custom game engines, audio middleware and digital audio workstations, and can be called from languages that use external libraries. Supported systems include Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS; SteamOS is also listed as a runtime platform. Integration requirements include Unity 2017.3 or later, Unreal Engine 4.27 or later, FMOD Studio 2.00 or later and Wwise 2023.1.0 or later. The project describes its development tools as being in Beta. Steam Audio is available free to developers, subject to a license agreement.