[X3D-Public] Spatial Audio - was Re: potential free audio formats for X3D - ogg and flac

[John A. Stewart]

Dave:

> ... put on The Rift thinking you'll be taken by the scenery, and you  
> are (don't get me wrong) but to the point where you want to close  
> your eyes and take in the ambiance of Tuscany or Fiji. And then  
> there's no good sound. Umph!

For a good while, FreeWRL had links to Propellerheads' Reason sound  
engine. This is one of the best (if not the best) professional audio  
synthesizers out there.

Worked well, nice to get echos off of walls, attenuation due to  
buildings, etc, etc.

Despite trying to push it, it never got much traction. Maybe I was  
just not focusing on the right area.

Right now, the reason links are commented out, and the shared library  
API was used under an NDA, so the code is DOA, but when it was  
running, it certainly was about 1,000 times better than what was in  
the X3D spec sound-wise...

Just an FYI of what kinds of things are possible. (the main interface  
was by using MIDI, so FreeWRL had MIDI interaction capabilities, MIDI  
commands controlled Reason audio devices, which in turn were set up in  
the Reason UI.)

Audio *is* a big issue.

John A. Stewart.