Game Development Sound Frameworks

Question

I'm working with a team that's building an engine for a variety of 2D and eventually 3D mini-games. The problem we're facing is a solid, cross-platform, sound API. Obviously, DirectX is out of the question due to our needs for cross-platform capabilities. SDL is nice, and works great, but let's face it SDL_Mixer is a bit limited in what it can do. We're currently using it, but when we eventually expand to 3D, it's going to be a problem.

I've been messing with OpenAL, but most of the documentation I've found is fairly out of date, and doesn't seem to work all that great. I'm willing to learn OpenAL, and fight my way through it, but I'd like to be a bit more certain that I'm not wasting my time. Other than the DevMaster tutorials though, I haven't seen much documentation that's blown me away. If someone has some better material than I've found, that'd be awesome.

I've also seen projects such as FMOD, which seems decent despite the licensing. However, like OpenAL, they have nearly non-existant documentation. Granted, I can pour over the code to deduce my options, but it seems like a bit of a pain considering I might eventually be paying for it.

Anyways, thoughts, comments, concerns? Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

(note: I have experience with FMOD, BASS, OpenAL and DirectSound; and while I list other libraries below, I haven't used them).

BASS and FMOD are both good (and actually I liked FMOD's documentation a lot; why would you say it's "non existing"?). There are also Miles Sound System, Wwise, irrKlang and some more middleware packages.

OpenAL is supposedly cross platform, and on each platform it has it's own quirks. It's not exactly "open", either. And I'm not sure what is the future for it; it seems like it got stuck when Creative got hold of it. There's a recent effort to built the implementation from ground up, though: OpenAL Soft.

Then there are native platform APIs, like DirectSound or XAudio2 for Windows, Core Audio for OS X, ALSA for Linux, proprietary APIs for consoles etc. I think using native APIs on each platform makes a lot of sense; you just abstract it under common interface that you need, and have different implementations on each platform. Sure, it's more work than just using OpenAL, but OpenAL is not even available on some platforms, and has various quirks on other platforms that you can't even fix (because there's no source code you can fix). Licensing a commercial library like FMOD or Miles is an option in a sense that all this platform dependent work is already done for you.

We're using OpenAL at work right now, but are considering switching away from it, because it's just not going anywhere and we can't fix the quirks. So while OpenAL is easy to get started, it does not get my vote as a good option.

Answer 2

I have used DirectX, FMOD and Wwise on a range of platforms in shipped games. I won't talk about DirectX here since other people will have plenty of feedback here ;-)

Here's what you need to consider:

• License, I put this first because this may make your decision for you. Have your lawyer go over them and make sure you understand the costing and restrictions.

• API - FMOD has a very clean, minimal API that is very easy to grok. Wwise offers a little more in terms of functionality, but its API seems much larger and cumbersome with awkward concepts to get your head around.

• Tools - Wwise has very sophisticated tools, geared very much towards audio-designers rather than programmers, if you want to give audio designers a lot of direct control and room for experimentation, Wwise may be the way to go. FMOD is catching up in the tool department but its tools are more geared towards programmers I feel.

• Performance - This is something you'll need to evaluate for yourself, you can't say any one is better than the other because it depends on your platform and type of game. You may get performance statistics quoted to you - take these with a grain of salt, they may well be idealised in some fashion. Determine your performance budget (eg 2 ms per frame for sound, X number of channels, X number of streams) and do a bunch of tests for different sound formats, sample rates and bit depths - graph those suckers.

• Support - Both FMOD and Wwise have very good support channels, good tech guys. Check if support costs extra though.

If you're asking me to pick one.. FMOD - it really is a very good product, those guys do a great job.