OpenAL gives you a low level access to your audio hardware. You can use it with any program that supports opengl, and you don't need to have any plugins. It's not easy to get it to work. If you've got a PC with a GPU that supports opengl, you can do some really cool things with it. I've been able to create a 3D audio engine that is able to run on mobile devices, and even on consoles. I haven't been able to reproduce the same audio quality on mobile, but I'm getting there. It would be great to be able to share audio files between the different programs I'm using. I can't do that with openAL, so I have to use a separate audio manager. I'm using OpenAL with the Unity engine and it's able to create a 3D audio engine that is able to run on mobile devices, and even on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
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