What's so good about FMod?

Well the title says it all.

In fact I'd like to clear up a few things if poss.

0) What is FMod?
1) Does BlitzMax have windows 98 sounds issues still?
2) Does BlitzMax have sounds issues in any other OSs like XP?
3) Is the default Blitz Max TSound stuff using FMod or somthing else?
4) Why would I want to use FMod instead of BlitzMax's TSound stuff.

Any answers would be great-tastic-cool.

Thanks.

0.A Cross-Platform audio api... go http://www.fomd.org

1.In my Japanese Win98... the issue exist (BMax) 1.18

2.In 2000 and XP seems ok.

3.Look @ BRL modules, they use freeaudio?

4.If you've know Fmod, it provides some quicker way, and Fmod supports streaming which BMax doesn't have yet...

Above are not accurate answer... however someone should know better.

0) FMod handles the playing of music in mod, it, xm, etc. format (http://www.fmod.org/)
1) Unsure
2) I ran into an issue where setting channel volume on my music would randomly affect sound effect volume, even though they were two seperate channels
3) BlitzMax has no native FMod support, unlike B2D, B+, B3D
4) Because mod music is cool in a retro way, and is a very small format, but having to pay a license fee for each commercial title that you use FMod with is what pushed me towards OGG (which has its own issues in Max, like long loading times since you can't stream anymore)

* edit *
Just learned that it supports a lot more formats than I thought - practically every format out there

Interesting answers thanks. Well I've got loads of mods I'd like to use on my free games, but I'll convert them to oggs for commercial games. There wasn't an FMOD licence fee to pay when playing mods in Blitz Plus games though, was there?

From an end users' point of view, bmax still has sound problems on win98. Why doesn't bmax use FMOD, is what I'd like to know.

Big10p: Are the Win98 sound issue BMax or DirectX? Does anyone know or have any fixes yet? This should really be HIGH on the list (for Blitz Research) as there are still a LOT of 98 PCs out there. Plus that DirectX rendering delay bug. Then maybe they can finish the 3D mod.

In one of Mark's post he mentioned the licensing issue since he can't provide fmod as a "library".....

I'm looking forward skid's portaudio module and ogg/theora streaming(those are mentioned but not implemented yet)

If you want to develop under win32 only and need a free module library, try audiere http://audiere.sourceforge.net/ , with LGPL license you can carry a DLL without problem.

It must be a fault with bmax because it's only bmax games I have issues with. Inca Quest, which uses FMOD I believe, worked perfectly.

hmm, so FMOD may have to be the way to go so as not to alienate 98 users, unless it get's fixed in the next two months of course! ...

0) FMOD is an extensive sound library, similar to BASS and Miles, among others.
1) No personal experience. Apparently yes.
2) Not in my experience, but I have a very normal Creative card. With lesser known brands or on board audio, anything is possible. freeaudio is still an infant.
3) It uses freeaudio, a home grown sound system developed by simon for Max. It is released as public domain.
4) freeaudio provides the most basic of sound support - loading of samples, playback of samples, sample volume, pitch and panning. FMOD provides that and more - sample offsetting, reversing, configurable loop points, including ping pong loops, mod/xm/s3m/it/oxm playback support, audio streaming, full control over EAX/A3D/DirectSound3D etc etc etc etc etc...
5) The version of FMOD licensed for BlitzBasic/Plus/3D is a special cut down version made in a special deal between BRL and the FMOD team. No such deal exists for Max because...

@big10p: BRL have an open source policy for all of their Max modules. FMOD cannot be distributed in this form, so it is not BRL's place to provide a module for it, according to their own policies. This is why freeaudio was created.

Wasn't it with the Creative cards that the problems were arising? I know it sounded awful on my SBLive/WinME machine. At least Mark ws kind enough to break .it playback in B3D so we're all sort of equal again :/

Well, whatever then. Creative's drivers certainly can suck too =] But it works fine for me. I guess I'm kind of lucky. =]

And it wasn't Mark that broke it playback in B3D, he updated FMOD because of previous issues in old versions. It just so happens new versions have other issues. Not Marks fault.

You're not seriously trying to tell me that FMOD has had broken .it support for -- what? -- a year or so now? Anyone who has used the library itself can tell you that it certainly hasn't.

Look: I buy a programming language, a feature of which is .it playback; The language's author "updates" it and suddenly that feature no longer works; Conclusion... the language's author broke the language's feature. The end.

Thanks for the update Toby, very informative.

Ah, that would explain it. Cheers.

Well, Mark even updated FMOD a second time, much much later and the problem remains.

it's possible because it support isn't allowed under the agreement. I don't know - just theorizing.