Wartbed:Architecture/Audio

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WARTBED Architecture
Documents related to technical design aspects and implementation details.
For a general overview of WARTBED, see the WARTBED Design Document

Architectural documents:

WARTBED

0.1 "Clausewitz"
0.2 "Jomini"
...

Evaluation of audio libraries for WARTBED

Library Notes Platforms Supported formats Licence Latest update
libsndfile Low-level sound file I/O. Bare metal C-interface. No playback, only file parsing. Win/OSX/Linux, probably compilable to others OGG, WAV, AIFF / AIFC, AU / SND, RAW, PAF, IFF / SVX, WAV, SF, VOC, W64, MAT4, MAT5, PVF, XI, HTK, CAF, SD2 , FLAC. Not MP3. LGPL Dec 2009
OpenAL Cross-platform 3D audio API OpenGL-inspired C-interface. Commercially initiated but open source. Surprisingly frequently used in AAA titles. Paradox: Heavyweight yet low-level. Seems to be hairy with much low-level drudgery and buffer manipulation. Win/MacOS/OSX/Linux/BSD/IRIX/Solaris/XBox Buffers only - ignorant of file formats Basically LGPL Active
BASS Low footprint (100kb) high-level library. Seems sleek and attractive. Will cost money for commercial releases. Officially Win & OSX. Also ported to Linux & iPhone. MP3, MP2, MP1, OGG, WAV, AIFF (+ extra thru add-ons); MOD (XM, IT, S3M, MOD, MTM, UMX) + compressed MOD; recording. Free/Commercial Active forum
Audiere High-level audio API. Not very frequently maintained? Windows/Linux/Cygwin/IRIX. OSX? Ogg, MP3, FLAC, uncompressed WAV, AIFF, MOD, S3M, XM, and IT files. LGPL Stable: Feb 2006 (before that July 2003). Current repo pathces.
PortAudio Low-level C-interface audio playback-from-raw-buffer library. Seems like smoother to work with than AL. Win/Mac/OSX/ASIO/UNIX/IRIX/BeOS/Linux ALSA & Jack Buffers only - ignorant of file formats MIT Repo trunk Feb 2010
* SDL audio layer SDL_Mixer is a C-interface for playing samples and music. Linux, Windows, Windows CE, BeOS, MacOS, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, IRIX, and QNX, and some unofficially supported OS:s. Seems to support WAV, AIFF and OGG, and MP# if compiled with a special flag. No native recording. LGPL SVN trunk active
* irrKlang cross platform sound library for C++, C# and all .NET languages. Seems very easy to code for. Affiliated with Irrlicht? Win, *nix (ALSA), OSX wav, ogg, mp3, flac, mod, it, s3d, xm Free for non-commercial, unlimited hobbyist = €65; unlimited indie = €290. Unknown
* cAudio "Advanced C++ wrapper for OpenAL"; seems like a very competent and powerful system, only drawback after a fast gander seems to be the pseudo-Hungarian notation used. Source for Win, Linux. Since it is a wrapper, it should have the same compatibility as OpenAL. Ogg, MP3, raw, WAV zlib SVN active now, latest stable 2.0.0 Feb 20th, 2010

More projects to check out

  • SoX is a program for converting between sound file formats.
  • Wavplay started out as a minimal WAV file player under Linux and has mutated into Gnuwave, a client/server application for more general multimedia and games sound playback.
  • Audiofile (libaudiofile) is a library similar to libsndfile but with a different programming interface. The author Michael Pruett has set out to clone (and fix some bugs in) the libaudiofile library which ships with SGI's IRIX OS.
  • sndlib is another library written by Bill Schottstaedt of CCRMA.
  • FMOD/FMOD Ex: Very wide range of target platforms. Free for non-commericial, and expensive for commerical ($100, $3000 and $6000, plus additional per-platform fees)

Striking Gold

The ideal would be if I could find a library wrapping AL and formatted file I/O.

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