Presenting BASS
Published by André Michelle March 15th, 2008 in optionsBASS is a cross-platform and tiny (<100K) audio library, which covers a great deal of sound formats and manipulation.
BASS is an audio library for use in Windows and Mac OSX software. Its purpose is to provide developers with powerful and efficient sample, stream (MP3, MP2, MP1, OGG, WAV, AIFF, custom generated, and more via add-ons), MOD music (XM, IT, S3M, MOD, MTM, UMX), MO3 music (MP3/OGG compressed MODs), and recording functions. All in a tiny DLL, under 100KB* in size.
On Windows, BASS requires DirectX 3 or above for output, and takes advantage of DirectSound and DirectSound3D hardware accelerated drivers, when available. On OSX, BASS uses CoreAudio for output, and OSX 10.3 or above is recommended. Both PowerPC and Intel Macs are supported.
Key features
- Support for WAV/AIFF/MP3/MP2/MP1/OGG and custom generated samples
- Stream any sample data in 8/16/32 bit
- MP3/MP2/MP1/OGG/WAV/AIFF file streaming
- Stream data from HTTP and FTP servers (inc. Shoutcast, Icecast & Icecast2), with proxy server support and adjustable buffering
- Stream data from anywhere using any delivery method
- Support for more than plain stereo, including multi-channel OGG/WAV/AIFF files
- Uses the same engine as XMPlay (very accurate, fast, high quality reproduction), with full support for all effects, filters, stereo samples, DMO effects, etc…
Man! I wish they just used BASS!
I’ve used BASS through the BASS Xtra (yeah, Director) and found it to be amazingly stable as well. The problem with this one is it is very expensive (currently per license).
I did find a while later OpenAL (http://www.openal.org/) which was almost the same as what BASS did (to my understanding) but free (alas I’d already spent my onerous amounts of money).
I think OpenAL is quite small as well, and looks to do a lot of what BASS does. I’d be happy with BASS though if Adobe was willing to buy them out (or get some massive license dealio).
OpenAL is LGPL as well so I think that means you can put it in non-LGPL software.
Down with OpenAL. Bass is nice but it will only cause more no *nix support issues. OpenAL is great and compact. It is also recently included in the iPhone SDK. I wish Adobe would just include the compact OpenGL as well, which the new iPhone SDK is also using. That is full platform support and some cross pollination there. I dont’ do enough with sound but I would bet on open.
BASS!
OpenAL doesn’t offer module player capabilities…