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Started: 11/13/2008 1:45 AM | |  | |
| | No more Linux support? I have spent quite a lot of time trying to get OpenAL working correctly on my Kubuntu 8.10. I have tried the distribution version, the most recent version of openal-soft, and the trunk of the svn repository. None of them worked correctly. I did manage to play some sound, but capture is completely broken. I currently have no other choice than to recommend to my boss that we ditch OpenAL and move on to other truely portable sound solutions.
Is this really correct? Have Linux support been dumped?
If someone will claim that it hasn't been dumped, then I hope he will also say when there will be a release that actually works. Or better yet, maybe even one with hardware acceleration. | |
Posted: 11/13/2008 2:16 AM | | | |
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From:
Posted: Thursday, November 13, 2008 1:45 AM
Subject: No more Linux support?
Is this really correct? Have Linux support been dumped?
The Linux version of OpenAL has been community-supported since Loki Software went out of business. It had been neglected for a while, but recently with OpenAL Soft it's been given "new life", so to speak.
It sounds like your recent problems have been two-fold.. first is that 1.3 has some bugs relating to capture, and also that the manual-compilation failed to find ALSA headers, and so the ALSA backend was disabled. The OSS backend is fairly simple by comparison, and mainly provided for systems where ALSA isn't available.
Or better yet, maybe even one with hardware acceleration.
Unfortunately though, there isn't one with hardware acceleration. This being due to a lack of an audio API on Linux that can provide proper acceleration for what OpenAL needs, and no direct-hardware OpenAL drivers. However, OpenAL Soft should be more than suited for most systems. | |
Posted: 11/13/2008 2:22 AM | | | |
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From:
Posted: Thursday, November 13, 2008 1:45 AM
Subject: No more Linux support?
I have spent quite a lot of time trying to get OpenAL working correctly on my Kubuntu 8.10. I have tried the distribution version, the most recent version of openal-soft, and the trunk of the svn repository. None of them worked correctly. I did manage to play some sound, but capture is completely broken. I currently have no other choice than to recommend to my boss that we ditch OpenAL and move on to other truely portable sound solutions.
Is this really correct? Have Linux support been dumped?
If someone will claim that it hasn't been dumped, then I hope he will also say when there will be a release that actually works. Or better yet, maybe even one with hardware acceleration.
Replying to myself here.
Once I removed my own silly mistakes, I actually did get the svn version working. And now the released openal-soft will probably work as well.
However, I probably have to drop OpenAL anyway, because of the missing hardware mixing support on Linux. I have a requirement to play 30 individual channels simultaneously, and the software implementation is inadequate for this. On Windows, I can play around 50 channels at the same time on my silly USB headset. On Linux, I can only do 5, and that gives a CPU use of around 90 %. Any more channels, and the sound starts to stutter a lot.
So I have to move on anyway, unless someone is about to release a version of OpenAL for Linux with hardware support. | |
Posted: 11/13/2008 3:08 AM | | | |
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From:
Posted: Thursday, November 13, 2008 1:45 AM
Subject: No more Linux support?
However, I probably have to drop OpenAL anyway, because of the missing hardware mixing support on Linux. I have a requirement to play 30 individual channels simultaneously, and the software implementation is inadequate for this. On Windows, I can play around 50 channels at the same time on my silly USB headset. On Linux, I can only do 5, and that gives a CPU use of around 90 %. Any more channels, and the sound starts to stutter a lot.
What's your target CPU? I ask because OpenAL Soft should be able to handle nearly 100 simultaniously playing sources on a ~900MHz CPU.
To be honest, I don't think lack of hardware acceleration is a problem. You won't be able to get hardware acceleration on Windows Vista, either (unless you happen to have a Creative card with native OpenAL drivers), or any future version of Windows. I'm not a proponent of software mixing over hardware mixing, but software mixing should be more than adequate. | |
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