[SDL] SDL 1.3 audio API proposal...

[Peter Mulholland]

Ryan C. Gordon wrote:
>> What about the possibility of taking advantage of the platforms mixing 
>> capability? Sort of like DirectSound's Primary and Secondary buffers, 
>> where the existing SDL audio API would be akin to DS's Primary buffers.
> 
> I'd say no...most platforms don't expose hardware buffers beyond what 
> DirectSound calls the "primary" one, so you end up mixing on the CPU 
> either way.

I disagree here. Windows obviously supports hardware mixing if the 
hardware has it. MacOS X doesn't yet but should they decide to do so in 
future, no doubt they will have an AudioUnit to do it (also I would 
imagine the mixer AU is very fast). Games consoles pretty much all have 
mixing hardware. The only odd one out here is Linux - a criticism of 
ALSA I have had for many years.

> Put like that: definitely no.  :)

I would say, leave the fancy stuff like music playback and streaming 
from files out of SDL, but make the multiple channel mixer part of it.

Just as a side question to this - is there any chance SDL_mixer will get 
  free rate mixing at any point?

Pete.