[SDL] Realtime audio...

[Anoq of the Sun]

Hello!


I've been reading the discussion about low-latency
audio - and I think there is a serious need for
this on platforms like Windows. And currently available
SDL games even suffer from this problem! (For instance
the games I wrote and some other SDL games I've tried).

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a good thing that SDL
got added support for low-latency audio?

At some point I will most likely come to need
this very badly for Windows :)

I have been considering to write directly to
DirectSound and doing something like this:

*) Separate "foreground" (low-latency) sound and
   "background" (less time-critical) sound.
*) The foreground sound could be implemented
   on one DirectSound buffer by just
   stopping whatever sound is playing and
   starting a new sound.

It will only allow
one "foreground" sound at the time, but
this would also be adequate for many cases - like:

a) The audio for an MPEG video stream
b) Click-sounds in a user interface.
c) The shooting-sounds in a first person
   3D shoot 'em up game
   (like doom/quake/unreal/halflife etc.)


Also, I looked at the MAIA website - and it
seems interesting - worth "admaiaring" I guess ;)
But it also looks like a very new project -
and it does not currently seem to aim for Windows...

I would love to hear what people think about
these audio-problems - and the future of
audio-support in SDL :)


Cheers
-- 
http://www.HardcoreProcessing.com