[Openal] OpenAL Soft 1.9.563 released!

[Chris Robinson]

Next release up and ready for download.

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

Lots of changes in this release. They include initial support for 
ALC_EXT_disconnect on some backends (mainly ALSA, OSS, Solaris, and the Wave 
Writer). It can also output 32-bit float for backends that can handle it 
(ALSA, DSound, PortAudio, and PulseAudio), and capture can take the mono and 
stereo float formats (ALSA and PulseAudio only). The ALC_FREQUENCY context 
attribute will now try to change the playback rate of the device, setting a 
rate that matches as closely as possible.

Of important note for users that have config files, there's been some changes. 
The backend-specific 'periods' options will no longer work.. instead, it's 
been made a global option. Additionally, the poorly named 'refresh' option is 
deprecated and will be removed for the next version. It's replaced by the 
period_size option, which is the number of sample frames mixed for every sound 
update. It is multiplied by the periods to get the full buffer size in sample 
frames. Ie..
  buffer_size = periods*period_size
The old 'refresh' option is analogous to the buffer_size value, so if 
period_size is left unset, you will get:
  period_size = refresh/periods
The default is 4 periods of 1K frames each.

Current plans for OpenAL Soft 1.10 are multiple contexts per device, and 
hopefully finalizing the ALC_EXT_thread_local_context extension (and the 
others; which, incidentally, is first on the agenda). I'd like to see OpenAL 
get more modular so that multiple plugins, that use OpenAL, can operate within 
a single program without tripping all over each other.

Feel free to toss questions and/or comments my way. Thanks for looking!