Question

Is there an API only for sound?

APIs such as Allegro or SDL provide too much for my needs. I simply need a library that can do something like:

InitSound();
Sound *door = LoadSound("door.wav");
PlaySound(door,volume);

It would also be great if it could support compressed formats such as Vorbis or MP3.

Answer 1

I’m a big fan of the SFML library. It does provide additional graphics and network features, but what is relevant to this question, is that it also has neat audio package.

Audio features are:

• Uses hardware acceleration whenever possible
• Can load and save standard sound formats:
  Ogg, WAV, FLAC, AIFF, Au, RAW, paf, 8SVX, NIST, VOC, IRCAM, W64, MAT4, MAT5 PVF, HTK, SDS, AVR, SD2, Core Audio Format, WVE, MPC2K, RF64
• Can load all audio resources directly from files in memory
• 3D sound spacialization
• Easy interface for capturing audio
• Manages memory efficiently, so that you don’t have to worry about resources lifetime or storage
• Supports streaming for big files; you can even write your custom streaming class for any source (network, …)
• Supports multi-channels formats (mono, stereo, 4.0, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1)

Website:
http://www.sfml-dev.org/