Re: [Alephmodular-devel] Sound thoughts

[Br'fin <br...@ma...>]

On Dec 9, 2003, at 1:32 AM, Alexander Strange wrote:

> Because it's 1:30 AM, I'm not going to attempt paragraphs or even 
> sentences.
>
> * Upgrading from Carbon Sound to CoreAudio for the Mac OS X sound 
> implementation gives us much greater flexibility; enough that we could 
> expand the generic API
> * CoreAudio supports n-channel sound, surround output (Dolby 5.1), 3D 
> effects (see the sample AUMixer3DTest), and other effects like reverb. 
> This lets us go far beyond active-panning stereo. It also lets us skip 
> most of our sound code, so:
> * Split *all* of the sound code up into classes. This is the stuff 
> that is still in sound.cpp. For instance, a CSoundSoft3DSpatializer 
> (with the current code) and a CSoundCoreAudio3DSpatializer (using 
> examples from AUMixer3DTest).
> * Also, get rid of the Quicktime code in CMusic_Carbon and restrict 
> CMusic to AIFF only, and play it through CoreAudio (see the sample 
> PlayAudioFile). This gets rid of the filetype problems.

I don't mind seeing the sound classes updated, but I don't know how to 
do it personally.

You're probably right that more of the sound code needs to be 
encapsulated in general. Though I do believe I hit my initial goal 
which was to separate the game sound handling from the platform 
specific details. Adding both a play sound 2d(location) and an option 
for attaching effects/filters to a sound would definitely be neat. 
(play bullet sound next to ear, doppler shifted)

Keeping current class naming/usage would probable be closer to the 
software 3D spatializer being handled as the default case, with the 
option that specific platform classes could override it with more 
specific code. If we did go with a CSound3DSpatializer classes (That 
I'm not so sure of, but if we did.) The base class would be 
CSound3DSpatializer (and have the software version implemented) and the 
platform specific one would be like CSound3DSpatializer_CoreAudio.

I really don't know what's up with Quicktime and the AIFF music file 
that's not typed that way. It feels like there should be some way to 
peek and say: "You don't understand it? Well, treat this data as an 
AIFF." I don't generally see a problem with A1's music handling (Which 
CMusic_Carbon was adapted from.) And playing only AIFF files seems 
restrictive if/when we ever bring back in game music.

-Jeremy Parsons