OpenAL

OpenAL

Original author(s)	Loki Software
Developer(s)	Creative Technology
Stable release	1.1 (installer 2.0.7.0) / June 2009; 7 years ago (2009-06)
Written in	C
Operating system	15 operating systems See: Supported platforms
Type	Application programming interface
License	BSD in early versions,LGPL before v1.1, Proprietary since v1.1
Website	www.openal.org

OpenAL (Open Audio Library) is a cross-platform audio application programming interface (API). It is designed for efficient rendering of multichannel three-dimensional positional audio. Its API style and conventions deliberately resemble those of OpenGL. Early versions of the framework were open source software, but the later revisions are proprietary.

OpenAL is an environmental 3D audio library that aims to provide an open replacement for proprietary (and generally incompatible with one another) 3D audio systems such as EAX and A3D. OpenAL can add realism to a game by simulating attenuation (degradation of sound over distance), the Doppler effect (change in frequency as a result of motion), and material densities.

OpenAL was originally developed in 2000 by Loki Software to help them in their business of porting Windows games to Linux. After the demise of Loki, the project was maintained for a time by the free software/open source community, and implemented on NVIDIA nForce sound cards and motherboards. It is now hosted (and largely developed) by Creative Technology with on-going support from Apple, Blue Ripple Sound, and individual open-source developers.

While the OpenAL charter says that there will be an "Architecture Review Board" (ARB) modeled on the OpenGL ARB, no such organization has ever been formed and the OpenAL specification is generally handled and discussed via email on its public mailing list.

Since 1.1, the implementation by Creative has turned proprietary, with the last releases in free licenses still accessible through the project's Subversion source-code repository. However, OpenAL Soft is a widely used open source alternative.