Sound concerns

[Stefan Dösinger]

Am 11.12.2009 um 19:07 schrieb Maarten Lankhorst:

> Hi all,
> 
> I believe most oconcerns about OpenAL have been addressed. One of the open questions was whether midi and wave would be synced. And I think the most likely answer is that they aren't, even on windows. On windows winmm midi drivers use winmm timeGetTime or QueryPerformanceCounter for DirectMusic. Sample accurate wave is used to sync with midi, by using exclusive mode or the asio model.
Sounds ok.

> If there are any other open concerns, apart from packaging, let me know, since I really want to get dsound openal merged. :)
> If there are still concerns that are open I would like to know, especially if they affect wasapi which is defined in include/audioclient.idl and audiopolicy.idl
Well, there are still the two (comparably minor) issues like

1) OpenAL's future, since the development is fragmented and little is going on. That said, there probably isn't much going on in the sound world(or its rather going backwards, see dsound3d), so its probably OK that there isn't much development

2) How maintaining separate winmm drivers for midi and using openal for wasapi and dsound is any better than using separate wasapi drivers that do midi+wave.

Since you're writing the code, if you're not concerned about (2) it's probably not an issue. Concerning (1) if I were writing this stuff I'd probably hedge my bets and avoid making openal an integral part of our sound design(like dsound via openal does). But again, you're writing the code, so you are the boss. And as far as I understand it using openal for dsound is one of your main goals and not an unintended side effect.