Converting AudioListener.GetOutputData to a wav file

Hello @aldonaletto,

I've read your helpful forum posts about audio in Unity, and I'm wondering if you might be able to help me. (Anything would be appreciated!)

Not for lack of googling I am tearing my hair out trying to understand how GetOutputData works, and how to transform that data into a file. This is my first attempt wrangling with audio, so I might get some terminology wrong. Bear with me...

My task is to use the AudioListener as a simulated microphone in a simulated 3D environment, and then export the "recorded" audio as a wav file (or similar uncompressed audio format). My AudioSource clip is playing a 10 second wav file at 44100hz.

I imagined that if I capture the right number of samples for each frame and store them in a list, then that list should translate into the recorded audio. Instead it's... something else (sounds like the clicks of a record player stuck at the end of the record).

I'm obviously missing something about how GetOutputData() works; there is surprisingly little documentation / forum posts I can find that explain what that gets and how to use it. (Most of them are of the sort "GetOutputData() gets your output data and stores them in a float array based on how many samples you want", which might make sense to somebody who understands what that data is in the first place, but it does not make sense to me.)

This is the code attached to my main camera, which has the AudioListener as well as its own AudioSource component for capturing the "recorded" clip. The other AudioSource clip is playing on an empty object nearby.

 private float[] outputData;
 private List<float> outputValues;
 private float[] outputValuesFloat;
 
     public AudioClip thisAudio;
 
     // Use this for initialization
     void Start () {
        
         outputData = new float[512];
         Invoke("PlayData", 5);
         outputValues = new List<float>();
         thisAudio = AudioClip.Create("thisAudio", 110592, 1, 44000, false);
     }
     
     // Update is called once per frame
     void Update () {
         AudioListener.GetOutputData(outputData, 0);
         for (int i = 0; i < outputData.Length; i++)
         {
             outputValues.Add(outputData[i]);
         }
     }
 
     void PlayData()
     {
         
         outputValuesFloat = new float[outputValues.Count];
         int j = 0;
         foreach (float thisFloat in outputValues)
         {
             outputValuesFloat[j] = thisFloat;
             j++;
         }
         thisAudio.SetData(outputValuesFloat, 0);
         this.GetComponent<AudioSource>().clip = thisAudio;
         this.GetComponent<AudioSource>().Play();