Re: OpenAL Shaders

Kip Warner wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> As I learn more and more about the OpenGL shader language (GLSL), I
> cannot help but reflect on a theoretical OpenAL analogue (ALSL?). Such a
> thought experiment leaves me with the OpenAL shader language, offering
> programmable interfaces for different stages of the auditory pipeline
> (e.g. DSP shader, for instance). Such shaders could be used for real
> time effects such as reverb, flanging, encoding to free multichannel Ogg
> Vorbis or non-free AC-3 for decoder hardware (home theatre), and even
> procedurally generated sounds (e.g. rain) to name a few.
>
> Obviously we would need large hardware vendor support to even consider
> such a thing a possibility one day, but then even Mesa supports the
> shader interface for select hardware already (albeit old hardware).
>
> What are peoples' thoughts?
>
>   

It's come up from time to time on the list (check the archives), but 
hasn't really gone anywhere, probably because of the lack of hardware 
vendor support that you mentioned.

Over the past years it seems that interest (at least in the gaming and 
simulation community) in dedicated audio processing hardware has waned 
considerably, despite the efforts of Creative and their (increasingly 
slim) competitors.  All of the audio talks I've been to recently focus 
on software solutions, using a spare core for audio processing, using 
vector instructions, etc, and only focusing on built-in audio hardware 
because that's all you can expect the consumer to have.  I wish it 
weren't this way (I still have a Creative card myself), but it's pretty 
much undeniable now.

I suppose you could look into implementing an audio "shading" language 
on a GPU (using CUDA or OpenCL), but I'd be worried about round-trip 
latency.   CUDA/OpenCL work great for batch processing (multiple 
operations on large data sets), but not so much for low-latency, 
real-time stuff, (at least that's what I've heard, I don't have much 
personal experience).  Not to mention that doing sound rendering on a 
graphics card is just wrong...  :-)

--"J"

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