[PATCH 1/7] dsound: Remove support for IKsPropertySet for now

[Chris Robinson]

On Friday 04 December 2009 7:50:59 am Stefan Dösinger wrote:
> Wrt OpenAL, I am opposed to using it for our sound system. I think its a
>  good idea for the transition to Win7, as a first driver and probably later
>  reference driver. But I think we need an exit strategy to get rid of
>  OpenAL as a hard requirement once the transition is done.

Though you'll still need a way to talk to the hardware. Using ALSA/OSS/etc 
directly has proven problematic with not only the current design and upkeep, 
but properly implementing various features. Not that I'm advocating PulseAudio 
here, but it is closer to how the Windows audio stack is, and it's put in 
quite a bit of dedicated work to get where it is.

Plus when you consider integration, having home-grown layers on top of 
hardware doesn't work that well. GDI/Direct3D wouldn't be where it is now if 
it didn't have Xorg/OpenGL to integrate into the user's graphics system. 
Similarly, making DSound use OpenAL will better integrate sound into the 
user's system by automatically honoring OpenAL's settings (eg. surround sound, 
audio quality), and outputting on whatever device/API it's configured to (eg. 
Pulse, networked), without DSound itself having to care.