[Openal] Question about Motu 828mkIII hardware

[Jason Daly]

Serge Lages wrote:
> Hi Dan and Jason,
>
> Thanks for your replies. I am a real newbie about sound development so 
> please excuse me if my questions are a little dumb... :/
>
> If I understand it well, having a single 12.2 system managed with 2 
> cards will be difficult (but possible).

Just to clarify, you'll have to edit the OpenAL implementation (the 
library) itself to do this.  Since you're a self-described newbie, it 
might not be the best solution for you (no offense intended ;-) ).

If you do want to give it a try, Chris Robinson's OpenAL-Soft 
implementation would be the best starting point.  You can get it at:

   http://kcat.strangesoft.net/openal.html


> And what about having a single application managing two 6.1 systems ? 
> Or even two applications, one for each card, then I can make them 
> communicate to know where to play the sounds.

You can certainly open two devices and contexts in OpenAL.  The problem 
is that the implementation will assume a typical 6.1 speaker layout (a 
la Dolby Surround EX) for both contexts, and there is no way (that I 
know of) to tell it where your speakers are.  There will always be sound 
coming from at least one speaker, even if all of your speakers are on 
the left or right side of the room.

You're not the first person with a non-standard hardware configuration 
like this, but unfortunately, I don't remember anyone contributing an 
implementation for your kind of use case, even though the OpenAL API 
would be the perfect interface for it.

--"J"