lovr-docs/guides/Sound.md

Sound

Sound is a very important part of creating an immersive VR experience. LÖVR makes it easy to load and play sound effects.

Basics

Sound functionality can be accessed via the lovr.audio module. To play a sound, you'll need to create a Source object by calling lovr.audio.newSource. Currently, only .ogg files are supported.

source = lovr.audio.newSource('airhorn.ogg')

Once the source is created, you can call a few functions on the source to control its playback:

source:play()   -- Play the source
source:pause()  -- Pause the source
source:resume() -- Resume a paused source
source:rewind() -- Rewind a source, playing it from the beginning
source:stop()   -- Stop a source

You can also get whether or not a source is in a particular state:

source:isPlaying()
source:isPaused()
source:isStopped()

You can set the volume and pitch of a source (even while it's playing):

source:setVolume(.5) -- Volume can be between 0 and 1
source:setPitch(2)   -- The default pitch is 1

Finally, you can control whether or not a source loops, which can be useful for background music:

source:setLooping(loop) -- true or false

Spatial Audio

LÖVR supports spatial audio, which means that sounds can be positioned in 3D space. When positioned, they will be slightly distorted to make it sound as if they are coming from their location in the virtual world! To position a source, use Source:setPosition:

source:setPosition(1.3, 2, -4.2)

Note that only mono sounds can be spatialized in this way.

Muting Audio

You can control all audio sources by using functions in lovr.audio. For example, lovr.audio.stop will stop all audio, lovr.audio.pause will pause all audio, and lovr.audio.resume will resume all paused audio.

You can also set the "master volume" for all sounds using lovr.audio.setVolume. This could be used to easily allow for configurable volume settings in the experience, or all sounds could be muted by setting the master volume to zero.

That's all you need to know to start adding sounds and music to your game!