Sound in OpenGL

This is probably an easy stupid question. But I'm still deciding on wether to choose DirectX or OpenGL. I was going to go for OpenGL because of the simplicity and its portability, but I heard we have to use DirectSound for sound... Do I need the DirectX SDK to use DirectSound? Or is there an other way to play MIDI or .wav files in OpenGL? (I'm using C++ if that can help you answer)

There probably are, but none will be as platform independent as OGL. Most people use DirectSound because it's easy to work with and well supported in Windows. Yes, DirectSound is part of DirectX, so I think you'd need the SDK for that, but I don't remember. It's been awhile since I've worked with it.

Though there are other tools out there, I'm sure. From a quick google, try: http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/~gary/rtaudio/
Hadn't used it, but looks nice.

Doing sound with OpenGL would be like doing matrix algebra with winzip. But I'm sure you didn't quite mean it like that ;-)

I recommend SDL_mixer. If you're not using direct3d, then DirectX has little to offer most developers beyond SDL. The major bonus of using SDL is that your code becomes very easily portable to mac, windows, linux, solaris, whatever floats your boat. Standards compliant C++/SDL/OpenGL should 'just work' on any supported platform.

Cool, I checked around with both, but it said that you had to put a really high buffer rate with RtAudio on Windows or it will crash... And to use RtAudio I need the DirectSound source and headers. And SDL_mixer looks pretty good. Is SDL_mixer often updated?

And I heard about OpenAL...how does that look?

EDIT: Another thing about SDL_mixer, is it really 'known' by a lot of programmers? And, do you think it would be good enough to write a midi sequensing program?

OpenAL is a more advanced solution than SDL_mixer. It includes powerful functionality relating to positional sound/effects. I believe that several commercial games have made use of OpenAL, including UT2003. If you're looking for something with industrial whack for 3d multimedia, then OpenAL may be for you.

As for the amount of work going into SDL_mixer, I think that it's relatively complete. It's certainly not been abandoned, if that's what you mean.

I believe that SDL_mixer is popular amongst non-directx developers.

I am not informed on midi stuff. SDL_mixer has some basic timidity-based functionality, not sure if that's what you're looking for.

Well...actually I don't know what I'm looking for yet! But what is timitdity? I went on the OpenAL and only a little bit of the hardware companies support it. And I have a good ol' crappy P166 with a 'no name' sound card. So until I get my laptop I want to hear what I'm doing! And why did you recommend SDL_mixer, do you have experience with it?

How about FMOD? It looks pretty good. It's even portable one the PS2 AND XBox! Anybody know a lot about FMOD?

I have a little experience with SDL_mixer - I found the documentation really sane and easy to understand.

Timidity is a free software midi synth.

As for OpenAL, isn't that just going to use whatever sound implementation is present on your OS, rather than needing to support different sound cards itself? I exclude the advanced functionality (EAX, etc) of course.

I've never heard of FMOD. Don't read anything into that, I'm no sound-guru.

Cool, thanks. Timidity is exactly what I'm looking for (i think...) But I downloaded an exmple program using OpenAL and the first thing it said was: DINPUT8.DLL was not found.

If you didn't know, that is for DirectInput. I don't get this... why would it need that?

FMOD is here: http://www.fmod.org/ just incase you want to see it and give me your opinion.

I guess that this particular example program used directinput - it certainly isn't a requirement for OpenAL. I quite frequently code something with a depenance on SDL when it's not strictly necessary just out of habit :-)

As for fmod, thanks for the link - I hadn't heard about that project. It's not free software, so I probably wouldn't use it myself, but I'm glad to be aware of it.