[Bf-committers] Re: Sound System cleanup, using SDL

[Alexander Ewering]

On Sun, 11 Mar 2007, Peter Schlaile wrote:

> Hi,
>
>> Is the Project Openings list up to date?
>> Especially the Sound System cleanup task.
>> I am famailiar with SDL and I want to the cleanup work.
>
> can anyone explain to me, why we don't just use one of the two?
> (Open AL _or_ SDL)?
>
> If I understand it correctly, one probably should use OpenAL all over the
> place because of it's 3D-sound features.
>
> Or is there anything Open-AL can't do, what SDL can do?

Back when I implemented sound for the sequencer, SDL was the easiest and
obvious option for me, and it started as an in-house feature anyway.

I also looked at OpenAL because it was already in Blender, but frankly,
OpenAL appeared so low-quality (very bad docs, very instable (didn't even
work here in the Game engine)) that I used SDL instead (which I was already
familiar with).

Of course, if OpenAL supports the two crucial features for sound in
animation (querying the current sample buffer position and low latency),
then it should replace SDL.

I also wrote an entire 3d soundsystem of my own, which uses SDL for output,
so in fact, instinctive-blender completely dropped OpenAL and uses SDL for
both the gameengine and the sequencer (which is the other way around from
what you suggest). I think the sources are up...

| alexander ewering              instinctive mediaworks
| xx-mail.com/instinctive     http://www.instinctive.de