[Openal] OpenAL useful for sound synthesis??

[Jason Daly]

Louis Desjardins wrote:
> I am able to compute 10 seconds of sound and then output this to the 
> audio device simply via OSS. However, I need to be able to do this in 
> an "on-the-fly" manner, i.e. I cant be precalculating 10 seconds of 
> sound, but rather, I will be calculating a few milliseconds of sound 
> samples at a time and playing these as soon as they get processed.

As much as I'm a proponent of OpenAL, I don't think it will work very 
well with a few milliseconds (or even tens of milliseconds) of audio at 
at time.  The buffer queueing mechanism was designed with larger chunks 
of audio in mind.

If you can deal with computing a hundred or more milliseconds at a time 
(maybe even as low as fifty), then you might be OK with OpenAL.  Of 
course, this is just my gut feeling, and not based on any tests.  The 
only way to know for sure is to try it.

-- 

--"J"

"I'm a castaway stranded in a desolate land,
 I can see the footprints in the virtual sand."
	--Neil Peart