Mercurial > SDL_sound_CoreAudio
annotate mixer/tutorial.txt @ 565:a737d89af74e
Capitalized some lowercase extensions, to match all the others.
| author | Ryan C. Gordon <icculus@icculus.org> |
|---|---|
| date | Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:40:21 -0500 |
| parents | 3a3807dcf57f |
| children |
| rev | line source |
|---|---|
| 478 | 1 |
| 2 SDL_sound version 2.0: Your Mixer, And Welcome To It. | |
| 3 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 SDL_sound v2's major addition is a software mixer. There are some other new | |
| 6 features, but this is the Big New Thing. | |
| 7 | |
| 8 | |
| 9 Some notable features of this mixer: | |
| 10 - No clamping at mix time. Most SDL-based mixing is done via SDL_MixAudio(), | |
| 11 which mixes two samples together, clamping to 16-bits, and then mixes the | |
| 12 next sample into this already-clamped buffer. This can lead to audio | |
| 13 distortion. SDL_sound mixes all samples into a 32-bit floating point buffer | |
| 14 before passing it to the audio device, which means no unnecessary clamping. | |
| 15 It also means it can be more optimized for MacOS X's CoreAudio and other | |
| 16 next-gen audio subsystems, which require you to feed it float32 data. | |
| 17 | |
| 18 - Optimized mixing: MMX, SSE, 3DNow!, and Altivec are used internally where | |
| 19 appropriate. (er...they WILL be, at least!) | |
| 20 | |
| 21 - Multiple "music" files. SDL_mixer is notorious for making a distinction | |
| 22 between "sound" and "music" files (that is, things that can be trivially | |
| 23 decoded to a waveform without bloating the memory footprint vs. things that | |
| 24 can't), and only allows mixing of one music file at a time. SDL_sound | |
| 25 doesn't bother with this distinction, which means you are free to mix any | |
| 26 combination of audio formats at the same time. | |
| 27 | |
| 28 - No "channels". If you want to mix 1,000 audio files and have the hardware | |
| 29 to cover it, you can. You don't have to manage playback channels. There | |
| 30 isn't a seperate "music" channel, since "music" isn't treated differently | |
| 31 from any other audio. | |
| 32 | |
| 33 - Lots of formats. SDL_sound already decodes a huge number of audio formats. | |
| 34 As the mixer is layered on top of this, all of the format support comes | |
| 35 for free. | |
| 36 | |
| 37 - Can handle non-power-of-two resampling. If your samples are at 8000Hz | |
| 38 and the audio hardware is at 11000Hz, this doesn't cause output problems. | |
| 39 | |
| 40 - Control over buffering and mixing. SDL_sound already lets you control how | |
| 41 much audio is prebuffered and predecoded; this carries over to the mixer, | |
| 42 so you can customize how your resources are being used on the fly. | |
| 43 | |
| 44 - Flexible enough for those that need to micromanage mixing, but dirt simple | |
| 45 to for those that just want to make some noise. | |
| 46 | |
| 47 - It can be compiled out if you just want the 1.0 API for decoding formats. | |
| 48 (initializing the mixer subsystem in this case will fail, but for binary | |
| 49 compatibility, the entry points will still exist). | |
| 50 | |
| 51 A brief tutorial follows. | |
| 52 | |
| 53 | |
| 54 Example #1: Play a sound and get the heck out of there. | |
| 55 | |
| 56 #include "SDL_sound.h" | |
| 57 | |
| 58 int main(int argc, char **argv) | |
| 59 { | |
| 60 Sound_MixInit(NULL); // start the mixer; don't care what format. | |
| 61 Sound_Sample *hello = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("hello.wav", NULL, 10240); | |
| 62 Sound_MixPlay(hello); | |
| 63 while (Sound_MixPlaying(hello)) | |
| 64 SDL_Delay(100); // wait around; mixing is in a seperate thread! | |
| 65 Sound_FreeSample(hello); | |
| 66 Sound_MixDeinit(); | |
| 67 return(0); | |
| 68 } | |
| 69 | |
| 70 Every tutorial needs a "Hello World" example. | |
| 71 That will play hello.wav, wait for it to finish, and terminate the program. | |
| 72 But that's not really mixing! To qualify, you'd need to play two sounds at | |
| 73 once. So let's do that: | |
| 74 | |
| 75 | |
| 76 Example #2: Mixing two sounds. | |
| 77 | |
| 78 #include "SDL_sound.h" | |
| 79 | |
| 80 int main(int argc, char **argv) | |
| 81 { | |
| 82 Sound_MixInit(NULL); // start the mixer; don't care what format. | |
| 83 Sound_Sample *hello = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("hello.wav", NULL, 10240); | |
| 84 Sound_Sample *music = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("icculus.ogg", NULL, 10240); | |
| 85 Sound_MixPlay(music); | |
| 86 while (Sound_MixPlaying(music)) | |
| 87 { | |
| 88 if (!Sound_MixPlaying(hello)) | |
| 89 { | |
| 90 Sound_Rewind(hello); | |
| 91 Sound_MixPlay(hello); | |
| 92 } | |
| 93 SDL_Delay(100); // wait around. | |
| 94 } | |
| 95 Sound_FreeSample(music); | |
| 96 Sound_FreeSample(hello); // will stop if it happens to still be playing. | |
| 97 Sound_MixDeinit(); | |
| 98 return(0); | |
| 99 } | |
| 100 | |
| 101 Same deal, but we play some music ("Icculus in San Jose" from the talented | |
| 102 Emmett Plant, in this case). We also load our "hello" sound from the previous | |
| 103 example. While the music is playing, we check if "hello" is playing, and if | |
| 104 not, we set it up to play again. Note that the two sounds are playing at the | |
| 105 same time, mixed together. Cool, huh? | |
| 106 | |
| 107 You might notice that we called Sound_Rewind() on the hello sample. This isn't | |
| 108 part of the mixer itself, and is a function from SDL_sound v1, before there | |
| 109 was a mixer at all. This illustrates that you can use the usual SDL_sound | |
| 110 methods to manipulate a sample in the mixer, including seeking and predecoding. | |
| 111 These are safe operations even while the sample is playing. | |
| 112 | |
| 113 That's about all you need to know to effectively use the mixer. Everything | |
| 114 after that is extra credit. | |
| 115 | |
| 116 | |
| 117 Extra credit #1: Mixer Attributes. | |
| 118 | |
| 119 An API's got to know its limitations. SDL_sound isn't meant to be a robust 3D | |
| 120 spatialization library. For that, one should look to the excellent OpenAL API | |
| 121 at http://www.openal.org/. Still, for many reasons, OpenAL might not be a good | |
| 122 fit: it doesn't support many audio formats (and all formats except uncompressed | |
| 123 integer PCM are optional extensions to the API), it is less likely to | |
| 124 support your platform and audio output target than SDL, and it is more | |
| 125 complicated to feed it streamed audio. While not as robust as AL's feature | |
| 126 set, SDL_sound v2 provides a handful of useful attributes you can set on a | |
| 127 sample to alter its playback. | |
| 128 | |
| 129 | |
| 130 Basic Attribute #1: Looping. | |
| 131 | |
| 132 Checking a sample's playing state in a loop just so you know when to restart | |
| 133 it has two problems: first, it's a pain in the butt, and second, there may | |
| 134 be a gap in the audio between when the sound starts and when you're able to | |
| 135 restart it. To remedy this, SDL_sound lets you flag a sample as "looping" so | |
| 136 you don't have to micromanage it. It will continue to rewind and play until | |
| 137 you explicitly stop it. Let's take our last example and do this right: | |
| 138 | |
| 139 | |
| 140 Example #3: Mixing two sounds with better looping. | |
| 141 | |
| 142 #include "SDL_sound.h" | |
| 143 | |
| 144 int main(int argc, char **argv) | |
| 145 { | |
| 146 Sound_MixInit(NULL); // start the mixer; don't care what format. | |
| 147 Sound_Sample *hello = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("hello.wav", NULL, 10240); | |
| 148 Sound_Sample *music = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("icculus.ogg", NULL, 10240); | |
| 149 Sound_SetAttribute(hello, SOUND_ATTR_LOOPING, 1); // turn on looping. | |
| 150 Sound_MixPlay(music); | |
| 151 Sound_MixPlay(hello); | |
| 152 while (Sound_MixPlaying(music)) | |
| 153 SDL_Delay(100); // wait around. | |
| 154 Sound_FreeSample(music); | |
| 155 Sound_FreeSample(hello); // will stop now. | |
| 156 Sound_MixDeinit(); | |
| 157 return(0); | |
| 158 } | |
| 159 | |
| 160 ...it's that easy. | |
| 161 | |
| 162 | |
| 163 Basic attribute #2: Fire and forget | |
| 164 | |
| 165 You'll notice in previous examples that we are taking the pains to explicitly | |
| 166 free the resources associated with a sample via the Sound_FreeSample() call. | |
| 167 In a small program like this, it's easy to be tidy and sweep up after one | |
| 168 or two hardcoded sounds, but when you are managing a lot of different sounds, | |
| 169 or a lot of copies of the same sound, this can become tedious. Case in point: | |
| 170 laser beams. | |
| 171 | |
| 172 Let's say you've got a space fighter game, with a bunch of ships flying | |
| 173 around and shooting at each other. Every time they fire a laser, do you really | |
| 174 want to take the effort to decide when it is done and clean it up? You want | |
| 175 to, quite literally in this case, "fire and forget" the sound...that is, you | |
| 176 want the mixer to playback the audio and then clean it up without further | |
| 177 action or intervention from you. | |
| 178 | |
| 179 So let's take our previous example and adjust it to clean up after us. | |
| 180 | |
| 181 | |
| 182 Example #4: Fire and forget playback. | |
| 183 | |
| 184 #include "SDL_sound.h" | |
| 185 | |
| 186 int main(int argc, char **argv) | |
| 187 { | |
| 188 Sound_MixInit(NULL); // start the mixer; don't care what format. | |
| 189 Sound_Sample *hello = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("hello.wav", NULL, 10240); | |
| 190 Sound_Sample *music = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("icculus.ogg", NULL, 10240); | |
| 191 Sound_SetAttribute(hello, SOUND_ATTR_FIREANDFORGET, 1); | |
| 192 Sound_SetAttribute(music, SOUND_ATTR_FIREANDFORGET, 1); | |
| 193 Sound_MixPlay(music); // play once, then call Sound_FreeSample() for you. | |
| 194 Sound_MixPlay(hello); // play once, then call Sound_FreeSample() for you. | |
| 195 while (Sound_MixPlayingCount() > 0) | |
| 196 SDL_Delay(100); // wait around. | |
| 197 | |
| 198 // Don't need Sound_FreeSample() here anymore! | |
| 199 | |
| 200 Sound_MixDeinit(); | |
| 201 return(0); | |
| 202 } | |
| 203 | |
| 204 So everything was deallocated automatically, and your mother didn't even have | |
| 205 to come along and tell you to clean up this pig sty! She is very proud of you | |
| 206 right now, I assure you. | |
| 207 | |
| 208 You'll note that we call Sound_MixPlayingCount() to see if the music finished. | |
| 209 You have to do this because the "music" sample is invalid once it gets pushed | |
| 210 through Sound_FreeSample(), which will happen as soon as the mixer is done | |
| 211 with it. To avoid touching deallocated memory, we just ask the mixer if | |
| 212 anything is still playing. | |
| 213 | |
| 214 Also, common sense dictates that looping sounds never get to the "forget" | |
| 215 part of "fire and forget", since they don't stop playing. You can either | |
| 216 manually halt them or turn off the looping, though, and then they'll clean | |
| 217 themselves up. | |
| 218 | |
| 219 | |
| 220 Basic attribute #3: Per-channel Gain. | |
| 221 | |
| 222 If you can tweak the volume of the left or right channel on a sample, you can | |
| 223 accomplish (or at least fake) a surprising number of simple sound effects. | |
| 224 Therefore the mixer allows you to do just this, and then builds a few features | |
| 225 on top of this magic. | |
| 226 | |
| 227 This is accomplished by tweaking the "gain" of a given channel. "Gain" is just | |
| 228 a fancy way of saying "volume". You specify it as a floating point number, | |
| 229 usually in the range of 0.0f to 2.0f. If you set the gain to 0.0f, it results | |
| 230 in silence, and 1.0f results in no change at all. 0.5f halves the volume and | |
| 231 2.0f doubles it. As you might have guessed, the sample gets multiplied by | |
| 232 this value. | |
| 233 | |
| 234 SDL_sound's mixer lets you tweak each channel in a sample individually. Right | |
| 235 now we're limited to mono (one channel) and stereo (two channel) sounds, but | |
| 236 this will probably be enhanced at some point. It's worth noting that this | |
| 237 refers not to the sample itself but to the speakers where they play. This | |
| 238 means you can set the left and right channels of a sample, even though the | |
| 239 sample itself only has one. Since a 2-speaker setup will promote a mono sound | |
| 240 to stereo (same waveform is fed to each speaker), you can tweak it to play at | |
| 241 different volumes in the left and right. | |
| 242 | |
| 243 | |
| 244 So to rehash our tired hello world example again... | |
| 245 | |
| 246 Example #5: Per-channel gain. | |
| 247 | |
| 248 #include "SDL_sound.h" | |
| 249 | |
| 250 int main(int argc, char **argv) | |
| 251 { | |
| 252 Sound_MixInit(NULL); // start the mixer; don't care what format. | |
| 253 Sound_Sample *hello = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("hello.wav", NULL, 10240); | |
| 254 | |
| 255 // Every channel's gain defaults to 1.0f, or no adjustment. | |
| 256 | |
| 257 Sound_SetAttribute(hello, SOUND_ATTRGAIN0, 0.0f); // left chan==silence. | |
| 258 Sound_MixPlay(hello); // plays just right channel. | |
| 259 while (Sound_MixPlaying(hello)) | |
| 260 SDL_Delay(100); // wait around. | |
| 261 | |
| 262 Sound_SetAttribute(hello, SOUND_ATTRGAIN0, 1.0f); // left chan==normal | |
| 263 Sound_SetAttribute(hello, SOUND_ATTRGAIN1, 0.0f); // right chan==silence | |
| 264 Sound_MixPlay(hello); // plays just left channel. | |
| 265 while (Sound_MixPlaying(hello)) | |
| 266 SDL_Delay(100); // wait around. | |
| 267 | |
| 268 Sound_FreeSample(hello); | |
| 269 Sound_MixDeinit(); | |
| 270 return(0); | |
| 271 } | |
| 272 | |
| 273 | |
| 274 This played the hello sound twice, once in each speaker. Simple. | |
| 275 | |
| 276 Well, almost simple. If you only have mono output (one speaker), then this | |
| 277 will play silence the first time (channel 0 set to silence), then the sound | |
| 278 at normal volume the second time (channel 0, the only speaker, set to normal). | |
| 279 In a 1-speaker setup, screwing with the second channel is ignored. | |
| 280 | |
| 281 If this is going to be a pain for you to track yourself, you can use | |
| 282 Sound_MixInit() to set up a stereo environment and let it dither everything | |
| 283 down to one speaker behind the scenes if need be. Generally, this isn't a | |
| 284 huge concern, though. | |
| 285 | |
| 286 | |
| 287 Extra Credit #2: Fading | |
| 288 | |
| 289 Sometimes you want to fade out (or fade in) a sound over time...this is | |
| 290 handy when ending a game level. It's a nicer effect to silence everything | |
| 291 over some small amount of time than to abruptly kill all the noise. This is | |
| 292 more pleasant for the end-user. | |
| 293 | |
| 294 You could accomplish this by tweaking each channel of all your samples' gain | |
| 295 over time, but this is another one of those things that are annoying to | |
| 296 micromanage. The mixer has to constantly pay attention to these samples anyhow, | |
| 297 why should you do it, too? | |
| 298 | |
| 299 SDL_sound gives you a means to instruct the mixer to take care of this. | |
| 300 | |
| 301 | |
| 302 Example #6: Fading a sound. | |
| 303 | |
| 304 #include "SDL_sound.h" | |
| 305 | |
| 306 int main(int argc, char **argv) | |
| 307 { | |
| 308 Sound_MixInit(NULL); // start the mixer; don't care what format. | |
| 309 Sound_Sample *music = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("icculus.ogg", NULL, 10240); | |
| 310 Sound_MixPlay(music); // Start music playing. | |
| 311 Sound_SetAttribute(music, SOUND_ATTR_FADEOUT, 10000); | |
| 312 SDL_Delay(10000); | |
| 313 Sound_SetAttribute(music, SOUND_ATTR_FADEIN, 10000); | |
| 314 SDL_Delay(10000); | |
| 315 Sound_FreeSample(music); | |
| 316 Sound_MixDeinit(); | |
| 317 return(0); | |
| 318 } | |
| 319 | |
| 320 | |
| 321 So this starts our favorite song playing, and tells it to fade to silence | |
| 322 smoothly over 10000 milliseconds (that is, 10 seconds). Since we know how | |
| 323 long we want this to take, we lazily call SDL_Delay() to wait that long; the | |
| 324 mixer works in another thread, so we have the luxury of doing nothing here. | |
| 325 Then we fade it back in over another 10 seconds before exiting. | |
| 326 | |
| 327 It's worth noting a few things here: | |
| 328 First, the FADEOUT attribute uses the same mechanism as SetGain() under the | |
| 329 hood when mixing, but the two attributes exist seperately: if you double the | |
| 330 gain (2.0f), the sound will drop in volume twice as much each time the fading | |
| 331 updates, but it's still going to go from twice-as-loud to silence in the | |
| 332 same amount of time (10000 milliseconds in this case). | |
| 333 | |
| 334 When a sample is totally silent, either because it faded out or you set its | |
| 335 gain to 0.0f, it is still playing! If you were to turn the volume back up | |
| 336 30 seconds after the fade completes, you'd hear the sound as it would be at | |
| 337 that 30 second moment as if you hadn't silenced it at all. This has a few | |
| 338 important ramifications: | |
| 339 1) It's still taking CPU time. Maybe not as much, since we can choose not | |
| 340 to mix when the gain is 0.0f, but in order to keep the sound "playing" | |
| 341 we might need to decode more of it, which means CPU time and memory | |
| 342 usage and such. Best to halt a silent sound if you aren't going to need | |
| 343 it. | |
| 344 2) Sound_MixPlayingCount() might be > 0 even though you don't hear noise. | |
| 345 3) A sound might not be where you left it. Keep better track of your things! | |
| 346 | |
| 347 You might also notice that we called Sound_FreeSample() on a playing sample. | |
| 348 This is legal. If a sample is playing when you free it, the mixer knows to | |
| 349 halt it first. | |
| 350 | |
| 351 | |
| 352 Extra Credit #3: Halting | |
| 353 | |
| 354 SDL_sound's mixer is a little different than most, in that there aren't | |
| 355 seperate playing states. "Halting" a mixing sample means you took it out of | |
| 356 the mixing list. "Playing" it means you put it back in, and it picks up the | |
| 357 mixing with the sample as it found it. | |
| 358 | |
| 359 If you want something anologous to that "stop" button in WinAmp, you would | |
| 360 halt the sample and then call Sound_Rewind() on it. Next time you start it | |
| 361 playing, it'll be playing from the start of the sample. If you didn't call | |
| 362 Sound_Rewind() first, it'll be playing from where you halted it. That's more | |
| 363 like clicking WinAmp's "pause" button. | |
| 364 | |
| 365 However, there are times when you want everything to stop at once. Just | |
| 366 looping over every sample and halting them isn't any good, since some might | |
| 367 play just a tiny bit longer...it's a lovely bug called a "race condition". | |
| 368 | |
| 369 And, as I'm sure you've heard me say before, why do a lot of work to manage | |
| 370 stuff that the mixer has to manage itself anyhow? You should learn to | |
| 371 delegate more, you control freak. | |
| 372 | |
| 373 | |
| 374 Example #7: Halting. | |
| 375 | |
| 376 #include "SDL_sound.h" | |
| 377 | |
| 378 int main(int argc, char **argv) | |
| 379 { | |
| 380 Sound_MixInit(NULL); // start the mixer; don't care what format. | |
| 381 Sound_Sample *hello = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("hello.wav", NULL, 10240); | |
| 382 Sound_Sample *chatter = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("chatter.wav", NULL, 10240); | |
| 383 Sound_Sample *music = Sound_NewSampleFromFile("icculus.ogg", NULL, 10240); | |
| 384 Sound_MixPlay(music); | |
| 385 | |
| 386 Sound_MixPlay(hello); | |
| 387 while (Sound_MixPlaying(hello)) SDL_Delay(100); // wait around. | |
| 388 Sound_MixPlay(hello); | |
| 389 while (Sound_MixPlaying(hello)) SDL_Delay(100); // wait around. | |
| 390 Sound_MixPlay(hello); | |
| 391 while (Sound_MixPlaying(hello)) SDL_Delay(100); // wait around. | |
| 392 | |
| 393 Sound_MixHalt(music); // halt the music. | |
| 394 | |
| 395 Sound_MixPlay(hello); | |
| 396 while (Sound_MixPlaying(hello)) SDL_Delay(100); // wait around. | |
| 397 Sound_MixPlay(hello); | |
| 398 while (Sound_MixPlaying(hello)) SDL_Delay(100); // wait around. | |
| 399 Sound_MixPlay(hello); | |
| 400 while (Sound_MixPlaying(hello)) SDL_Delay(100); // wait around. | |
| 401 | |
| 402 Sound_MixPlay(music); // start the music where it left off. | |
| 403 Sound_MixPlay(chatter); // start the chatter. | |
| 404 | |
| 405 SDL_Delay(3000); // let them play. | |
| 406 Sound_MixHalt(NULL); // halt _everything_ that's playing. | |
| 407 SDL_Delay(3000); // waste some time. | |
| 408 Sound_MixPlay(music); // start the music where it left off. | |
| 409 Sound_MixPlay(chatter); // start the chatter where it left off. | |
| 410 SDL_Delay(3000); // waste some more time. | |
| 411 | |
| 412 Sound_FreeSample(music); // clean up and quit. | |
| 413 Sound_FreeSample(chatter); | |
| 414 Sound_FreeSample(hello); | |
| 415 Sound_MixDeinit(); | |
| 416 return(0); | |
| 417 } | |
| 418 | |
| 419 | |
| 420 Ok, you following? That plays the music, plays "hello" three times while the | |
| 421 music is playing, halts the music and plays hello three times without anything | |
| 422 else, restarts the music where it left off mixed with "chatter" for three | |
| 423 seconds, stops everything (music and chatter in this case), waits three more | |
| 424 seconds of silence, restarts the music and chatter where it left off and | |
| 425 lets them play for three more seconds. Then it shuts it all down and goes | |
| 426 home. | |
| 427 | |
| 428 Fun, huh? | |
| 429 | |
| 430 There are some notable exceptions to this rule. When a sound gets to the end | |
| 431 of its mixing, it either halts or (if set looping) rewinds and starts playing | |
| 432 again without missing a beat. For these, you don't have to manually halt | |
| 433 (or manually restart, as it were). | |
| 434 | |
| 435 | |
| 436 You now have everything you need to make a game with robust audio. But for | |
| 437 some of you, that's not enough. You're never satisfied. You need the section | |
| 438 of this tutorial written for... | |
| 439 | |
| 440 | |
| 441 THE HARDCORE. | |
| 442 | |
| 443 (These sections are brief and lack full examples. If you're hardcore, you | |
| 444 probably don't read wussy tutorials anyhow.) | |
| 445 | |
| 446 | |
| 447 Hardcore #1: low-overhead copying of a sample. | |
| 448 | |
| 449 Let's say you've got a sound file that represents a laser blast. Everytime a | |
| 450 shot is fired in your game, you don't want to have the overhead of reloading | |
| 451 it from disk, decoding and mixing it on the fly! | |
| 452 | |
| 453 Here are some tips for your efficiency: | |
| 454 | |
| 455 - Opt for an uncompressed format, such as a standard .WAV file or even | |
| 456 raw PCM. For small, frequently used sounds, the bigger memory footprint | |
| 457 is usually an acceptable tradeoff to constant redecoding. In some cases, | |
| 458 we've found that compressing to, say, .ogg format actually makes the | |
| 459 file bigger if it's a very short sound. | |
| 460 | |
| 461 - Put your sound into a memory block and point multiple memory RWOPS at | |
| 462 it: one per playing sound. There are functions in SDL_sound 2 | |
| 463 for allocating these from a pool, which reduces allocation overhead | |
| 464 and memory fragmentation, and eliminates multiple trips to the disk | |
| 465 when you "read" the sound. | |
| 466 | |
| 467 - Sound_Sample structures are allocated in a pool, too, so throwaway | |
| 468 sounds (specifically, ones using pooled RWOPS) don't thrash system | |
| 469 resources. Good for those fire-and-forget effects. | |
| 470 | |
| 471 - It's trivial to roll a reference-counting RWOPS that lets you use the | |
| 472 same memory block for several playing sounds, and when the last one | |
| 473 closes it (all related Sound_Samples go through Sound_FreeSample()), it | |
| 474 deletes the original memory block. Handy if you only want to loosely | |
| 475 manage those buffers. | |
| 476 | |
| 477 - Cull samples if you're playing too many. The app can decide which sounds | |
| 478 are important and assign them a priority, and let only the first X | |
| 479 highest priority sounds actually mix. | |
| 480 | |
| 481 - Alternately, if you can swallow the memory: take a highly-compressed | |
| 482 file and put it into a Sound_Sample, call Sound_DecodeAll. Now, use | |
| 483 the sample's "decoded" field as raw PCM for other Sound_Samples using | |
| 484 above tricks. When you are done, clean up the other samples first, then | |
| 485 call Sound_FreeSample() on this one. This is extremely useful if you | |
| 486 want to reduce CPU usage for one sound that is otherwise compressed. | |
| 487 Memory usage doesn't grow exponentially with each simulataneous mixing | |
| 488 of this sound, because everyone is feeding from the same memory block, | |
| 489 so each new sample instance adds some bytes for the structures (which | |
| 490 might have been allocated in the pool already anyhow). | |
| 491 | |
| 492 | |
| 493 Hardcore #2: Predecoding and buffer sizes. | |
| 494 | |
| 495 Take advantage of the 1.0 API for predecoding and altering the decode buffer | |
| 496 size. This gives you control over the memory/CPU tradeoff at mix time, as the | |
| 497 mixer will call Sound_Decode() when it needs more data from a playing sample. | |
| 498 How much decoding is done at that point depends on how much buffering is | |
| 499 available. If you predecode the whole thing with Sound_DecodeAll(), then the | |
| 500 mixer can focus on mixing and not spend time decoding. | |
| 501 | |
| 502 | |
| 503 | |
| 504 Hardcore #3: Global gain, global fade. | |
| 505 | |
| 506 Most attributes that apply to one sample can be applied to all by passing a | |
| 507 NULL for the first argument to Sound_SetAttribute(). Gain and fade are | |
| 508 examples of this. If you want everything to fade out at once, this is the | |
| 509 best, race-condition free way to do it. | |
| 510 | |
| 511 Note that global attributes don't override (or overwrite) per-sample | |
| 512 attributes. If you set a sample's gain to 2.0 and the global gain to 0.5, the | |
| 513 sound plays at normal (1.0) gain...the sample's gain is still 2.0 when you | |
| 514 change the global gain thereafter. | |
| 515 | |
| 516 | |
| 517 Hardcore #4: Postmix callbacks. | |
| 518 | |
| 519 You can register a callback function per-sample that is called when the mixer | |
| 520 has finished its work and is about to send the data to the audio hardware. | |
| 521 These generally run in seperate threads on most platforms, and as such must be | |
| 522 protected from your main code with mutexes. | |
| 523 | |
| 524 These are useful if you are are writing a media player and want to show some | |
| 525 sort of visual feedback based on the playing audio data, or if you want to | |
| 526 tweak the sound with your own special effects. | |
| 527 | |
| 528 | |
| 529 Hardcore #5: Sample finished callback. | |
| 530 | |
| 531 You can register a callback function per-sample that is called when the mixer | |
| 532 has completely finished mixing a non-looping sample. This is largely a nod to | |
| 533 SDL_mixer, where this was the most convenient way to clean up fire-and-forget | |
| 534 sounds, but most people will want to let SDL_sound handle those. This has | |
| 535 other good uses: it lets you know when sound events are complete if you are | |
| 536 adding cinematics/cut-scenes to your program, or perhaps when it's safe for | |
| 537 characters to speak again (it's strange when one actor is speaking two | |
| 538 overlapping lines of dialogue, for example). | |
| 539 | |
| 540 | |
|
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541 Hardcore #6: Procedural samples. |
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542 !!! WRITEME: Hook up a RAW Sound_Sample to a RWOPS that generates sound on |
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543 !!! WRITEME: read, so you can mix in a procedural sample instead of just |
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544 !!! WRITEME: pre/post mixing. |
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545 |
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546 |
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547 |
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548 Hardcore #7: Your suggestion here! |
| 478 | 549 |
| 550 The goal is to try and make audio work fairly painless for the game developer, | |
| 551 which means that if there is a good way to generalize functionality into the | |
| 552 mixer layer, we probably should. Comments are welcome! | |
| 553 | |
| 554 It's worth noting that this tutorial covers common usage patterns and the Big | |
| 555 Important Things, so a lot of support API isn't covered here. For example, | |
| 556 important things like being able to query sample attributes weren't important | |
| 557 enough to mention here, but that doesn't mean you can't do it). | |
| 558 | |
| 559 // end of mixer.txt ... | |
| 560 |