Sound Driver Q&A For Noobs

Q) For doing Windows based games. Which sound driver should I use? Even if it's a commercial 3rd party system, no problem. Stability across XP/Vista is the main concern.

Q) For doing Mac based games, which driver should I use.

Q) I'm already a licensed Bass user, has anyone had any experience using Bass with BMax? I know there is a BMax / Bass wrapper around, but I havn't tried it yet.

Again, just looking for a stable solution I can depend on and start working with. Don't know why I would need to have multiple driver support in my app like some games do? Perhaps someone could shed some light on that for me? Thank you for your thoughts on this subject. ;)

I dunno about the Mac stuff.

If cost was no issue I'd probably go for Bass or FMOD now. Currently I'm using OpenAL (Generic Software driver) on Vista, FreeAudio on everything else. Switchable via an 'advanced options' page between FreeAudio, DirectSound, and OpenAL.

OpenAL Generic Software has a *slight* performance hit, but I figure its not a problem if a PC is fast enough to run Vista anyway. Its not a massive issue on my 6yr old laptop with a P3 1.1GHz cpu in it, but I did observe a slight and fairly insignificant drop in execution speed.

OpenAL Generic Hardware - channel limitations on some older cards.

FreeAudio - 1 second delay when playing audio under Vista.

DirectSound - crackly on some cards under Vista.

Thats why I eventually opted for the solution above. I put code in the archives to detect the Windows OS version, if you need it.

I was FreeAudio until I installed vista. I tried OpenAl and DirectSound but still had troubles with my on-board sound card. I now use FMOD and I can't be happier and my headaches is gone. Many people complain about the lic fees but it's free for freeware, $100 for shareware/indie.

Hi dmaz, I've never used FMOD. I'll try researching it. Thanks for the heads up. ;)