What is the best sound engine to use?????

Hi fellas,

Currently making a 3D game using Truevision 3D, fantastic engine. However, I have read that the TVMedia part of the engine (that does sound and movies) doesn't work yet with c++.

Which sound engine would you recommend as being EASY TO USE, that will let me stream mp3/wav files, synchronising with graphics. need something that will work WITH truevision not against. I have tried FMOD and BASS but I am struggling to get them working due to lack of useful walkthroughs and problems with conflicting libraries.

Any suggestions would be very grateful.

Cheers, Adam.

As far as I know, there are no real "sound engines" out there, just your basic sound API's, of which you have tried two.

The usual suspects that are mentioned are FMOD (which you have used) and OpenAL. Both would allow you to stream mp3/wav files, but not out of the box (there is talk, not sure if it has happened yet, to remove the native wav loading functions from OpenAL), you will have to do a bit of work.

The advantages and disadvantages of each API are pretty relative and I won't go into that here (though make sure you fully understand the pricing plans of the API if it has one!)

I have trouble believing you cannot get help on FMOD, as their main site is usually more than helpful when it comes to fixing problems. They have a wealth of information on the FMOD forums too. Maybe you should direct any problems you are having with the library over that way?

Sorry I havn't been able to give you the answer you want, but hopefully I've helped you with something!

Spree

OpenAL... that's a good library.

Originally Posted by SpreeTree

s, but not out of the box (there is talk, not sure if it has happened yet, to remove the native wav loading functions from OpenAL), you will have to do a bit of work.

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Huh? It doesn't have it and there's talk of removing it?

Hummm maybe I should read what I write more often! :wink:

To clafiey, I ment OpenAL has no native way of loading/streaming mp3, though (and I suppose I hoped ppl would understand me) there is native wav _loading_ through alut (though I didnt say that did I )

There has been talk, though little of late, in the developers OpenAL forum, to remove alut and all its accosiated baggage, have just have the bare bones OpenAL, and leave it up to the user (or other libraries) to load the sound data from all and sundry.

Hope that makes more sense. Ive read this post a few times now...

Spree

Would openML be any use for opening audio? I've read the openML pages, but still not got the gist of what it _really_ does. Is it just a driver interface like openGL?

As far as I can tell, OpenML deals with a lot more that just sound. It has a lot of features for sound/video capture, playback etc. and so (I think) would be a bit bloated just for loading in sound data for OpenAL. But having said that, I'm def not clear on exactly what OpenML is (and from posts I have read about it, a lot of people are in the same boat) and its probably really bloody useful!

It does look like there is a big market out there for a light weight OpenSource library that just opens and loads various sound file types and sets them up for streaming/playback in OpenAL (or other sound libraries). I'm quite surpised someone hasn't released something like that already, I'm sure it would be quite popular.

Spree

I know openML does a lot of something..

OpenML in future, but now OpenAL is best (imho) API, And you can make sound engine self, it is easy and interesting.