Programming and APIs

Submitted by xangis on Tue, 2007-01-02 11:42

Programming APIs

	Windows	Linux	MacOS	Solaris	webOS
ALSA	No	Yes	No	No	Not directly
ASIO	Yes	No	No	No	No
Core Audio	No	No	Yes	No	No
DirectX DirectSound	Yes	No	No	No	No
DirectX XAudio2	Yes	No	No	No	No
FMOD	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
OpenAL	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
OSS	No	Yes	No	Yes	No
SDL	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

As you can see, both OpenAL and SDL support all major platforms.

OpenAL

Developed by Creative as a multiplatform positional audio SDK. It is very easy to use.

http://www.openal.org

DirectX DirectSound

Supported on computers running Microsoft Windows only. It has two components - DirectSound and DirectMusic. DirectSound is older and more low-level, while DirectMusic supports more high-level loading and playing of audio files and interactive music. DirectMusic is deprecated and does not work on 64-bit Windows systems. It has been replaced by XAudio2.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/

SDL Audio

A multiplatform audio SDK with very basic functionality. It is geared toward playback more than anything, so don't expect to use it to create a professional studio recording application.

http://www.libsdl.org/index.php

ASIO

Created by Steinberg, ASIO is specifically geared toward professional audio applications and is supported by most major Windows-based multitracking applications, including Steinberg's own Cubase series.

http://www.libsdl.org/index.php

FMOD

A commercial multiplatform API. If asked which API was the best, this would be our answer. The price, however, reflects the quality, although it is more accessible to non-commercial developers via its freeware licensing.

http://www.fmod.org/

JACK

The JACK audio connection kit is a low-latency audio interface originally designed for Linux. It has been ported to other operating systems.

http://jackaudio.org/

ALSA

The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, a sound programming interface for Linux. Although it is well-written, the documentation is terrible. Your best bet is to look at some source code.

http://www.alsa-project.org/