Wwise Audio Tools

A C++ library and command-line tool for converting Wwise WEM audio files to OGG Vorbis format and extracting WEM files from BNK soundbanks.

About

Wwise encodes audio as .wem files using a modified Vorbis format with stripped headers, custom packet framing, and external codebooks. The traditional approach to decoding these requires chaining two separate tools (ww2ogg + revorb) with manual codebook management. This project combines both into a single library with a clean API and a CLI tool that handles everything automatically.

Installation

Prebuilt CLI Binaries

Prebuilt wwtools binaries for Windows, macOS, and Linux are available on the GitHub Releases page. Download the appropriate archive for your platform and add the binary to your PATH.

Library Integration

This package is not on Conan Center. To consume it as a dependency, use the tnt-coders fork of cmake-conan which supports building packages from source via a #recipe: annotation.

In your conanfile.py, add the #recipe: comment pointing to the Git repository:

def requirements(self):
    self.requires("wwise-audio-tools/1.0.0") #recipe: https://github.com/tnt-coders/wwise-audio-tools.git

The cmake-conan provider will automatically clone the repository, run conan create, and cache the package. No manual steps are needed.

In your CMakeLists.txt:

find_package(WwiseAudioTools REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(your_target PRIVATE WwiseAudioTools::WwiseAudioTools)

Usage

Command-Line Tool

# Convert all WEM files in the current directory
./wwtools
 
# Convert a specific WEM file to OGG
./wwtools wem input.wem
 
# Get WEM file metadata
./wwtools wem input.wem --info
 
# Extract and convert WEMs from a BNK soundbank
./wwtools bnk extract soundbank.bnk
 
# Extract raw WEMs without converting to OGG (written to a soundbank/ subdirectory)
./wwtools bnk extract soundbank.bnk --no-convert
 
# Get BNK soundbank info (version, embedded WEM IDs)
./wwtools bnk soundbank.bnk --info
 
# Show event-to-WEM mappings (all events or a specific event ID)
./wwtools bnk event soundbank.bnk
./wwtools bnk event soundbank.bnk 12345

When extracting from a BNK, streamed WEMs (those not fully embedded) require the corresponding <id>.wem file to be present in the same directory as the BNK.

Library API

The public API is defined in a single header: wwtools/wwtools.h

WEM to OGG conversion:

#include "wwtools/wwtools.h"
#include <fstream>
#include <sstream>
 
// Read WEM file
std::ifstream input("audio.wem", std::ios::binary);
std::stringstream buffer;
buffer << input.rdbuf();
 
// Convert to OGG (throws on failure)
std::string ogg_data = wwtools::Wem2Ogg(buffer.str());
 
std::ofstream output("audio.ogg", std::ios::binary);
output << ogg_data;

Extracting WEMs from a BNK soundbank:

#include "wwtools/wwtools.h"
#include <fstream>
#include <sstream>
 
// Read BNK file
std::ifstream input("soundbank.bnk", std::ios::binary);
std::stringstream buffer;
buffer << input.rdbuf();
 
// Extract all WEMs with their IDs and streaming status
std::vector<wwtools::BnkEntry> wems = wwtools::BnkExtract(buffer.str());
 
for (const auto& wem : wems) {
    if (wem.streamed) {
        // Load full audio from external <wem.id>.wem file
        continue;
    }
 
    // Convert embedded WEM data to OGG
    std::string ogg_data = wwtools::Wem2Ogg(wem.data);
 
    std::ofstream output(std::to_string(wem.id) + ".ogg", std::ios::binary);
    output << ogg_data;
}

Building from Source

Requirements

• CMake 3.27 or higher
• C++23 compatible compiler
• Conan 2 package manager

Dependencies are installed automatically via cmake-conan during the CMake configure step.

# Configure (automatically installs Conan dependencies)
cmake --preset release
 
# Build
cmake --build --preset release
 
# Run tests
ctest --preset release

CMake Options

Option	Default	Description
BUILD_CLI	ON	Build the wwtools command-line tool
PACKED_CODEBOOKS_AOTUV	ON	Use aoTuV 603 codebook data (recommended)
PROJECT_CONFIG_ENABLE_DOCS	ON	Enable Doxygen documentation target (requires Doxygen)
PROJECT_CONFIG_ENABLE_CLANG_TIDY	ON	Enable clang-tidy lint targets (requires clang-tidy)

Linting

Requires clang-tidy and run-clang-tidy to be installed (typically from an LLVM/Clang package). The targets are only available when run-clang-tidy is found on PATH.

cmake --build --preset release --target clang-tidy       # check only
cmake --build --preset release --target clang-tidy-fix   # auto-fix

Documentation

API documentation for the latest stable release is hosted on GitHub Pages at: https://tnt-coders.github.io/wwise-audio-tools/

To build the documentation locally for a specific release or branch, you need Doxygen installed and on PATH. Optionally, install Graphviz to enable DOT graph generation (dependency diagrams, call graphs, etc.).

git checkout <tag-or-branch>
cmake --preset release
cmake --build --preset release --target docs

The generated HTML will be in build/release/docs/html/.