use-revolution Digest, Vol 13, Issue 38

[Richard Gaskin]

Judy Perry wrote:
> Hmmm,
> 
> Well, you could use soundChannels... but, oops, that's a Hypercard thingy,
> isn't it?!
> 
> Ummm, I don't think I've ever seen a good reason why this couldn't be done
> in Revolution other than it isn't. The traditional explanation from I
> think Scott Raney was something to the effect that it wasn't possible
> because PCs use so many different sound cards.  But, then, how is it that
> PC games seem to support multiple simultaneous sounds?
> 
> Is it possible in Director or Flash, anyone?

The two-channel sound system is a Mac Classic thang. Tiger's new audio 
architecture goes far beyond it, and while requests have already been 
mounting up for support of that in Rev I know it's a challenge to do so 
in a way that's both satisfying abd well justified given OS X's audience 
size.   That is, my hunch is there may be some support for it down the 
road, but maybe not on the day Tiger's released.

Variance among PC sound cards is no better than the variance among PC 
video cards and to some degree motherboards -- it's a compatibility 
nightmare.  Maybe Tuviah has the patience to deal with such a herculean 
task (he's shown heroic dilligence with with QT work thus far) but I can 
understand's Scott's reluctance to dive into it with all the other 
things he was working on in the engine.

I'm not sure about Director and Flash, but given that both are 
timeline-driven and Director has been architected since its birth for 
strictly multimedia work (while making more traditional apps is not its 
strong suit), it may be the case that they have their own sound 
subsystem that handles multi-channel sound quite well.  Troy?

Rev's implementation of QT does provide multiple sound channels.  For 
example, in the opening cloister of Brian Thomas' "If Monks Had Macs" we 
have up to four QT's running simultaneously, with three of them being 
audio (a ringing bell, monks chanting, and birds chirping).  But where 
Monks differs from the project that started this thread is the 
requirement for tight control over the timing.  As QT experts like 
Trevor can attest, the general QT API Rev uses for audio playback is 
great but also subject to QT's latencies.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
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