OpenAL with Steam Audio

[Abvadabra]

Is it possible to use Steam Audio with OpenAl as sound engine? Maybe somebody already did something like this? Or I just don't understand correctly how Steam Audio supposed to work?

[AC]

@Abvadabra - It should be possible to use Steam Audio with OpenAL.

Steam Audio basically works with floating point audio data. Some low level audio engine needs to supply that data to Steam Audio and play it back through your audio device. If OpenAL allows you to write some custom effects, you can use Steam Audio C API to create custom effects for 3D audio, occlusion etc.

[Abvadabra]

@achandak - The thing is that OpenAl already has 3D audio, distance attenuation, even some dsp effects. And because of this I dont quite understand the way we need to write integration with Steam Audio.

Should we just leave all tricky stuff to your platform and play post-processed audio samples produced by Steam Audio as background sound? Or there is some better approach I dont see?

I guess it's kind of a dumb question but I am stuck here for a bit

[AC]

@Abvadabra - Can you provide more context? Is OpenAL just a smaller piece of a bigger system you are building? What kinds of effects you are hoping to model with Steam Audio. Take a quick look at Unity plugin documentation about the kind of effect Steam Audio models.

[Abvadabra]

@achandak - For now we're using OpenAL for all audio in our game. Not only 3D sounds but also things like music, ui, ambients, etc.
But OpenAL doesn't provide support for realtime sound propagation, occlusion and reflections (basically, everything related to in-game geometry), and we were hoping to use Steam Audio for these effects.

[AC]

@Abvadabra - Thanks. This is a pretty good example of using Steam Audio. So, OpenAL has 3D audio and so does Steam Audio. You got to make a choice there.

In terms of adding support for transmission, occlusion, and propagation, download the Steam Audio C API documentation[valvesoftware.github.io] and check out the Integration Guide. That should help you get a sense of what you need to do to add occlusion and realtime reflection support in your game.

[Abvadabra]

@achandak - Thats pretty good, now I've got the idea how to use this.

Much thanks!