Audio programming in BMax?

I'm noob at audio programming, as in B3D every sound including sfx and music are handled by Fmod, and it's not a part of official BlitzMax modules, the audio features in BMax itself is pretty lacking :(

Want to clear something if someone knows please help.

1.Will portaudio better than freeaudio on older systems like 9x(it shouldn't be in consideration tho, 9x is phased out), and waht's the benefit portaudio over freeaudio?

2.It seems we can't use freeaudio and portaudio at same time, can't make it and didn't find any example.

3.Is streaming from harddisk hard so BRL can't make it working? Then what'll be the official solution to existing music playing issue.

4.Any simple way to get module music support back? I know there's one by Papa, is it possible to utilize open-sourced players like miniFmod into official BMax distro(I doubt using miniFmod is legal, but seems the only few ways to achieve it.)

NOT an Anwser

Seems that's more growing questions toward Max's audio capabilities.

Maybe it's still being developed?

Try it myself might be an option, however some official improvements should be better.

I did a fair bit of work messing round with port audio.

There are slight problems with stability, specifically with debugging, (yes I know about NODEBUG!!)

I'd suspect the main reason why there isnt streaming of any sort in Max (audio or video) is that brl are strugling (or ignoring) threads.

While there are difficulties with implementing threads, given that 4 core cpu's are litterally just round the
corner, it could be time BRL gave us a brl.thread
module!

I supouse the way GC works in current BlitzMax version makes it very hard to implement a safe threading system. I think really this is very important thing that has to be done, but I supose it'll not be done in a near future. when it's done, it'll improve a lot all loading / streaming issues.

I just switched to fmod. Finally I can stream my audio without having the whole app "lagging" when I load 200 kb ogg files!

As to threading... well I remember PureBasic has it(and a set of functions to to thread handling...).

If this(threading) is possible, I really hope to see it in near future :|

you could also try having a look at openAL redi is having a lot of sucess with his module replaying mod (starting to add a third format too!)