[Openal-devel] Doing sound fields

[Scott Mayo]

This question came up in a discussion with Chris Robinson, and he suggested
it might be worth bringing up here. To set the background, Chris sent me a
.dll for openAl Soft, which allows me to specify my speaker setup with an
environment variable, which gets around the Vista brain-dead problem of
forced stereo. (Thanks, Chris!) I've got this working, and can specify a
position x,y,z position for sound, and can hear the sound off in the right
direction. Yay openAL.

Now the problem. I have what amounts to a theater, rigged for 7.1 sound,
with seating for several people. In some situations, I want to produce a
sound that's "out there", in "that direction". This works fine. But in many
cases I'd want to create a sound that appears to originate from just a few
feet away from the listener - well inside the area bounded by the speakers.
The only way to do this is to fire multiple speakers at different volumes,
so the vectors add up to a point inside the room.

I don't see a way to explain to openAl that my speakers positioned X feet
apart, (X typically about 15), and laid out in a given configuration, and
that a sound 3' from the center needs to be handled by using all the
speakers (or most) at different volumes. 

I could probably write my own mixing and do it myself. I'd rather not. IS
there an openAL solution, now or planned?

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