What Sound Library?

limey · Post by **limey** » Mon Sep 27, 2004 10:03 am

Hi,
Can anyone recommend any decent sound libraries?

cheers

Post by **:wumpus:** » Mon Sep 27, 2004 10:11 am

OpenAL http://www.openal.org/
fMOD http://www.fmod.org/

limey · Post by **limey** » Mon Sep 27, 2004 10:55 am

Thanks I'll check them out

KeaponLaffin · Post by **KeaponLaffin** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 6:28 am

If you plan to make money with your project, go with OpenAL.

scriptkid · Post by **scriptkid** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 9:05 am

If you don't need 3D capabilities, SDL_Mixer is also a good and easy lib:

http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer

Btw. FMOD has a "hobbyist" licence, which is $100 if you don't sell to much copies and such. Pretty fair i guess.

Post by **:wumpus:** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 9:32 am

KeaponLaffin wrote:If you plan to make money with your project, go with OpenAL.

That of course depends.. If you make enough money, you can just as well buy an FMod license. (Although I have no idea if that's worth it, I'm not that much into sound libraries)

Goosey · Post by **Goosey** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 11:10 am

Looking at the Titles list at OpenAL there are a few (Such as UnrealTournament 2003/2004) that jump out.. I would say that is quite a convincing argument for this library.

scriptkid · Post by **scriptkid** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 9:13 pm

Goosey wrote:Looking at the Titles list at OpenAL there are a few (Such as UnrealTournament 2003/2004) that jump out.. I would say that is quite a convincing argument for this library.

Indeed, it's been used by some famous engines / games. But so is FMOD. Companies like Blizzard and Bethesda use it.

Modern sound libraries aren't that hard to get into so i'd advice to try two or three and then decide. It depends on your needs (as always of course). For example SDL_Mixer can very easily fade music in and out, which isn't that easy in FMOD for example. And OpenAL looks like OpenGL (API wise), so it might feel comfortable. And so on...

stodge · Post by **stodge** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 9:39 pm

I think they heavily modified OpenAL for Unreal Tournament though, as it was broken to some extent. I don't know what they released back to the community.

Mhiriacor · Post by **Mhiriacor** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 4:03 pm

Hi guys, thank you for your explaining of differents sound libreries, but do you know of any of this that have free licence and what about video playing??, any librery to play them with free licence???

Thank you for your time.

Banania · Post by **Banania** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 4:11 pm

For a free licence, it will have to be OpenAL or SDL_mixer.
FMOD is 100$ for non commercial use and 2000$ for commercial use(for one title)

There are also other libraries like Audiere, Bass(has a free non commercial version, I think) but IIRC, these are Windows only.

For video playing, have a look at the videoplugin in ogreaddons. I don't know of any other free video library worth looking at. But there might be...

EDIT:Audiere is not Windows only but it seems it has not been updated for a while.

Mhiriacor · Post by **Mhiriacor** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 5:12 pm

You know what kind of files can play this video plugin, and SDL-mixer and OpenAL???. thank you for your help.

epopov · Post by **epopov** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 5:41 pm

For sound / video, you can also use quicktime: it's free, it's supported on both windows and MAC, but I think not on linux though...
You can have a look here: http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/

Post by **pjcast** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 9:07 pm

There are actually two video plugins in ogreaddons: an ffmpeg version, and a Theora version. FFmpeg supports many formats, and that is the problem, patent infringement... So I would not release anything commercial with it.

Theora on the hand, is royalty free. It has decent quality. In the future, I think Dirac will be the next video plugin. The format of the video is Theora video with Vorbis audio. This post still roughly applies, at least when it comes to converting videos: http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 43&start=0

For a demo: http://www.wreckedgames.com/download.php

Kolobrod · Post by **Kolobrod** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 11:04 pm

Try this http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7234
It just alpha version, but it plays wav and ogg files. Prety simple and totaly free =)

johnnyfeego · Post by **johnnyfeego** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 11:53 pm

Anyway keep in mind that with openal you cannot do audio manipulation such as a nice reverb or an equalizer, with fmod you can, but personally I don't like fmod too much (since uses soundmanager on mac , that is and old thing...). So we are without good 3d audio libraries...

(...do I really have to write all the cross-platform audio code from scratch??

)

Banania · Post by **Banania** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 12:27 am

personally I don't like fmod too much

I like Fmod. It is far from perfect (some nice features missing) but it does what you want it to do.

I trust you on the Mac implementation though as I don't know anything about it.

Post by **pjcast** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 12:30 am

johnnyfeego wrote:Anyway keep in mind that with openal you cannot do audio manipulation such as a nice reverb or an equalizer,
...

You can do audio manipulation with OpenAL, you just have to write the code to manipulate the audio stream yourself, which is not too hard

Xinc · Post by **Xinc** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 2:54 am

lets not forget bass

http://www.un4seen.com/ it's free for non-profit projects, and one of the cheapest for commercial. And with all the goodies of FMOD. However, it's Window's only.

But if you want to get fancy, go Miles

http://www.radgametools.com/miles.htm "The most professional sound system in the world". No free trails, no binary, no source... till you purchase a license, for quite a few bucks

zarthrag · Post by **zarthrag** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 5:53 am

If you're an indie, plan on wrapping OpenAL (it isn't so bad, and most soundcards have built-in equalizers that the players will prefer anyway). The experience is invaluable also. I can literally just attach a "SFXSource" object to my entities and call "SFXSource->play()". great stuff.

I recently built an object oriented OpenAL wrapper for my engine that allows for rather transparent 3d sound support, ogg vorbis music, and sound-queueing/priority. (I plan to GPL it after my first title is completely done, we're ~drowning~ in art right now.) The alternatives:

Fmod: is cool, but a bit pricey - not a pick for a 1st commercial project.

Miles: Even if we did make $200,000 off of our 1st title, they aren't getting 20k.

Bass: But we love Macs...

And don't worry so much about openAL's EAX extensions, it's a pain in the butt that isn't worth it unless you're using some dramatic audio effects (underwater, cockpits, etc).

If you *need* reverb and stuff, spend the money. You'll spend your life trying to build an opensourced fmod.

Post by **temas** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 6:19 am

I've been using http://alpp.sourceforge.net/ with a simple Manager class that I pulled together. Pretty fun to just do

Code: Select all

SoundManager::getSingleton().play("Ranged/Attack");

johnnyfeego · Post by **johnnyfeego** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 4:15 am

pjcast wrote:You can do audio manipulation with OpenAL, you just have to write the code to manipulate the audio stream yourself, which is not too hard

AFAIK...(for what I know of OpenAL)
Yes but you can manibulate only sound buffers not the master buffers, I mean the audio output buffers. You can do this only with a modification of the AL source code (of each platform, of course

).
...uh I'm a sound applications developer I'm on JackOSX team!! I can do this!!