sound engine

I haven't used it, but I have herd A LOT of good things about it from people: FMOD


Chad

By surround sound, do you mean as in 5.1 surround, or just 3D positional audio?

im not sure what to use yet, i havent decided wether to go for a 5.1 system or a simpler headphone approach, if thats what your question is directed at.
ill have a look at fmod, it looks pretty nice, but im not sure if i like the licensing model, its rather pricy...

there also seems to be OpenAL, offering a license that seems to be far more appealing ;)
does anyone have experience with both?

I don't know about the 5.1 sound system, but if you want 3d positional audio with doppler effects due to movement, then OpenAL works fine for that. I have used it. As of now though, I use DX's audio system, which also does what OpenAL does, but is limited to windows. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, OpenAL on windows defaults to use DX. Also, IrrKlang, made by the same people as Irrlicht graphics engine is looking promising. I may switch to that one, but I haven't done yet. It appeals to me since I use Irrlicht to render my graphics at this time. If you are interested in the code for DX sound system, I can give you the classes. They load music and sounds and basically just wrap the DX API so it is easy to init, at least for me. Post here or PM me if you want the code and let me know how to send it, e-mail whatever.

DX10 dropped DirectSound, so you should use OpenAL if you want hardware accelerated sound :)

Quote:

Original post by _swx_ DX10 dropped DirectSound, so you should use OpenAL if you want hardware accelerated sound :)

I saw the article that the OpenAL website posted. It still should work, it just won't be hardware accelerated. Good thing OpenAL was easy for me to use. I had a very similar library using OpenAL instead of DX, but I switched to DX for some reason and don't remember why. Oh well, here I go again...