Ray-Traced Audio Reflections and Environmental Acoustic Diffraction in UE5 / Source 2: Competitive Benchmark Analysis and Hårdvara Interactions

[Hannah Rivera]

I’ve been running benchmark builds comparing UE5’s phonon-based environmental audio against Source 2’s occlusion model in competitive shooters, and I’m trying to figure out whether the ray-traced audio reflections actually translate to usable spatial cues or just add latency. When you’re calling footsteps in a ranked match, does the diffraction and absorption modeling give you cleaner directional information in reverberant spaces, or does the processing overhead blur the transient timing you rely on? I’ve seen some reports that material absorption coefficients are driving noticeable frametime spikes during audio-heavy moments.

On the hardware side, what kind of CPU vs. GPU distribution are you seeing when these audio ray-tracing features are enabled? I’m pushing 1440p competitive settings and noticing frametime inconsistency that correlates with environmental complexity, not just draw distance. Does a higher-core-count CPU absorb the phonon tracing overhead better, or is it primarily GPU-bound? And has anyone benchmarked whether disabling geometric occlusion modeling recovers enough frametime stability to be worth losing the spatial accuracy? Any empirical data on latency impact would be gold.

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