OpenSK Hopes To Be The Vulkan Of Audio/Multimedia

[phoronix]

Phoronix: OpenSK Hopes To Be The Vulkan Of Audio/Multimedia

OpenSK (Open Stream Kit) is a project driven by a Microsoft engineer that aims to be "a cross-platform low-level sound library inspired by the Vulkan API."..

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OpenSK-Project-In-Development

[q2dg]

What about OpenAL?

[mr_tawan]

What about OpenAL?

and OpenSL ?

[M@GOid]

Quote: "Inside every Microsoft engineer there is a opensource enthusiast trying to get out".

[Ancurio]

Indeed it looks very low-level. The API style is obviously Vulkan inspired (although strangely enough there are no pNext pointers in the argument structs), and content wise it seems to match very well to what ALSA exposes to userspace. I'm no audio expert, but it looks like ALSA isn't just the first implementation, but the main inspiration for the amount of control the API exposes (wonder how well it maps to other OS'es..). For the people mentioning OpenAL, it's obviously much lower level than that; it eg. allows directly writing to hardware buffers. Don't know about SLES.

A bit strange that he didn't name the utility library "libsku" or "libskut" =P

[Ancurio]

Indeed it looks very low-level. The API style is obviously Vulkan inspired (although strangely enough there are no pNext pointers in the argument structs), and content wise it seems to match very well to what ALSA exposes to userspace. I'm no audio expert, but it looks like ALSA isn't just the first implementation, but the main inspiration for the amount of control the API exposes (wonder how well it maps to other OSes..). For the people mentioning OpenAL, it's obviously much lower level than that, it eg. allows directly writing to hardware buffers. Don't know about SLES.

A bit strange that he didn't name the utility library "libsku" or "libskut" =P

[eydee]

It looks like a vicious circle to be honest. Just a few years ago Microsoft did everything to keep developers away from the core of the OS. One of the most controversial changes was completely removing hardware acceleration support from DirectSound, to make it more stable and reliable. Now low level APIs are emerging, developers are once again free to crash the hardware the way they want to. When it comes to graphics, the risk may be worth it, but a low level sound API? For what? At some point MS will be fed up with the damage to its reputation, and will remove support again. Then it all starts from the beginning...

[Daktyl198]

It looks like a vicious circle to be honest. Just a few years ago Microsoft did everything to keep developers away from the core of the OS. One of the most controversial changes was completely removing hardware acceleration support from DirectSound, to make it more stable and reliable. Now low level APIs are emerging, developers are once again free to crash the hardware the way they want to. When it comes to graphics, the risk may be worth it, but a low level sound API? For what? At some point MS will be fed up with the damage to its reputation, and will remove support again. Then it all starts from the beginning...

It's like you didn't even read the article and just saw "Microsoft Developer" and "low-level sound API". As for what it could be used for, I could think of quite a few reasons if I tried hard enough. A better audio experience than OpenAL in games being one I'd be particularly hyped about (maybe libraries on top of this specifically for positional audio?).

[Ancurio]

It's like you didn't even read the article and just saw "Microsoft Developer" and "low-level sound API". As for what it could be used for, I could think of quite a few reasons if I tried hard enough. A better audio experience than OpenAL in games being one I'd be particularly hyped about (maybe libraries on top of this specifically for positional audio?).

What is OpenAL lacking?

[c117152]

What is OpenAL lacking?

It's the golang & wayland arguments: OpenAL has too many features that make the API hard and buggy to implement.