[Openal] Max number of sources (and legit id values) foreachOpenALimplementation

[Daniel PEACOCK]

Hi,

I believe that OpenAL-Soft, Generic Software, Generic Hardware, and the
host-based 'native' OpenAL implementations on host-based Creative
soundcards all give the direct correspondence of maximum generated sources
== max number of simultaneous Sources.

The hardware based 'native' OpenAL implementations on hardware-based
Creative soundcards have the issue that maximum generated sources is equal
to number of available hardware "voices" at that time.  e.g. running
another application that uses hardware voices at the same time can cause
trouble (not a common situation because who runs 2 games at once?).  A more
serious issue is playing multi-channel buffers on a Source will take up
multiple voices, and thus prevent you playing buffers on all your generated
sources simultaneously.   The easiest solution to the 2nd problem is to use
the context creation hint and specify how many stereo voices you need up
front.

Dan
Creative Labs (UK) Ltd.

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                                       Re: [Openal] Max number of sources  
             07/30/2009 09:26          (and legit id values)               
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Hi all,
I have a follow up question on this.

I was reminded that with the Apple implementation, there is a
distinction between the maximum number of sources you can generate and
the maximum number of sources you can simultaneously play (the latter
being smaller than the former).

So for example on the Mac (not the iPhone), you may be able to
generate 256 sources, but you can only play 64 of them simultaneously
(unless you tweak the cap through one of Apple's extensions).

So for all the numbers collected here in this thread, do any of the
other implementations make this same strong distinction (ignoring the
issues of where hardware resources may suddenly be diverted for other
competing reasons)? So in the ideal case, does the maximum number of
generated sources == the maximum number of simultaneous playing
sources?

Thanks,
Eric
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