OpenAL Soft

Contents:

• Overview
• Features
• Release
• Download
• Installing

OpenAL Soft is an LGPL-licensed, cross-platform, software implementation of the OpenAL 3D audio API.
OpenAL provides capabilities for playing audio in a virtual 3D environment. Distance attenuation, doppler shift, and directional sound emitters are among the features handled by the API. More advanced effects, including air absorption, occlusion, and environmental reverb, are available through the EFX extension. It also facilitates streaming audio, multi-channel buffers, and audio capture.

If you need support, feel free to send a message to the OpenAL mailing list:
https://openal.org/mailman/listinfo/openal
There is also an issue tracker on the GitHub repository, if you wish to report a bug or make a feature request.
You can ask for help in IRC, #openal on irc.libera.chat (see https://libera.chat/ and https://libera.chat/guides for more information on libera.chat and connecting to it).

This library is multi-platform, with support for Linux, Windows, Android, OS X, iOS, and more. Audio backends for PipeWire, PulseAudio, ALSA, WASAPI, OpenSL, CoreAudio, OSS, JACK, DirectSound, WinMM, Solaris, SoundIO, PortAudio, SDL2, "Null" Output, and a .wav file writer are currently implemented. Loopback devices are also supported for playback to interface with other audio systems.

OpenAL Soft supports many extensions, including but not limited to AL_EXT_MCFORMATS and AL_EXT_FLOAT32 for multi-channel and floating-point formats, AL_EXT_BFORMAT for B-Format (ambisonic) soundfield audio buffers, and ALC_EXT_EFX for environmental audio effects such as reverb, occlusion, and obstruction. It supports mono, stereo, 4-channel, 5.1, 7.1, HRTF, UHJ, and B-Format output.

• Fixed PipeWire version check.
• Fixed building with PipeWire versions before 0.3.33.

• Fixed CoreAudio capture.
• Fixed air absorption strength.
• Fixed handling 5.1 devices on Windows that use Rear channels instead of Side channels.
• Fixed some compilation issues on MinGW.
• Fixed ALSA not being used on some systems without PipeWire and PulseAudio.
• Fixed OpenSL capturing noise.
• Fixed Oboe capture failing with some buffer sizes.
• Added checks for the runtime PipeWire version.
  The same or newer version than is used for building will be needed at runtime for the backend to work.
• Separated 3D7.1 into its own speaker configuration.

• Implemented the ALC_SOFT_reopen_device extension.
  This allows for moving devices to different outputs without losing object state.
• Implemented the ALC_SOFT_output_mode extension.
• Implemented the AL_SOFT_callback_buffer extension.
• Implemented the AL_SOFT_UHJ extension.
  This supports native UHJ buffer formats and Super Stereo processing.
• Implemented the legacy EAX extensions.
  Enabled by default only on Windows.
• Improved sound positioning stability when a source is near the listener.
• Improved the default 5.1 output decoder.
• Improved the high frequency response for the HRTF second-order ambisonic decoder.
• Improved SoundIO capture behavior.
• Fixed UHJ output on NEON-capable CPUs.
• Fixed redundant effect updates when setting an effect property to the current value.
• Fixed WASAPI capture using really low sample rates, and sources with very high pitch shifts when using a bsinc resampler.
• Added a PipeWire backend.
• Added enumeration for the JACK and CoreAudio backends.
• Added optional support for RTKit to get real-time priority.
  Only used as a backup when pthread_setschedparam fails.
• Added an option for JACK playback to render directly in the real-time processing callback.
  For lower playback latency, on by default.
• Added an option for custom JACK devices.
• Added utilities to encode and decode UHJ audio files.
  Files are decoded to the .amb format, and are encoded from libsndfile-compatible formats.
• Added an in-progress extension to hold sources in a playing state when a device disconnects.
  Allows devices to be reset or reopened and have sources resume from where they left off.
• Lowered the priority of the JACK backend.
  To avoid it getting picked when PipeWire is providing JACK compatibility, since the JACK backend is less robust with auto-configuration.

Building OpenAL Soft needs CMake version 3.0 or newer (older versions may possibly work as well, but are untested). Autotools is not supported. It should build on most compilers.

The latest release is 1.22.2, and is available in source form.
openal-soft-1.22.2.tar.bz2
Win32 and Win64 binaries are also provided.
openal-soft-1.22.2-bin.zip

A more up-to-date Git repository is available at GitHub and repo.or.cz.
Note that you will need to install Git to download it.

Older releases can be found here, and older binaries can be found here.

To install OpenAL Soft, first extract it. It will automatically extract itself into the openal-soft-1.22.2/ directory. Using your favorite shell, go into the build/ directory, and run:
cmake ..
Assuming configuration went well, you can then build it, typically using GNU Make (MSVC, KDevelop, and others are possible depending on your system setup and CMake configuration).

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