   Using Many Sources in OpenAL
  I was able to get a simple sound and sound source class setup. I understand the most implementation of OpenAL can only have a maximum of 32 sources set. Now, is that total sources that can be created and used, or just the max amount of sources that can be played simultaneously? I was able to create 40 OpenAL sources, and play the 40th source generated in that list, but I'm still unsure if there are any issues. I am leaning toward creating an OpenAL state engine like I did for OpenGL to cut down drawing API calls, only the OpenAL state engine will also generate somewhere like 16 OpenAL sources, and any time an instance of my SoundSource class plays a sound, it will query the source objects for an OpenAL source object that isn't current in use. This may be great for optimization, but is this the right way to go?My classes are designed to run on Windows, Mac OS X, and iPhone OS, btw, so it needs to meet all of their restrictions.   
  It's some time since I wrote my sound engine using OpenAL, but from what I remember I wrote a sound manager. This sound manager contains a number of hardware dependent channels on which it can play sources. The manager will decide that the X most important sources will be played. Criteria for the importance of sound sources are game logic flags (someone speaking with you), distance, volume.So, when for example, a NPC starts talking to you and you don't have a free sound channel available, the sound manager starts fading out the least important source, then starts the important one, in this case the NPC voice. This way you can handle as many sources as you like independently from the hardware supported channels.   ;  That's a good idea for handling priority, and along the lines of what I was thinking about doing. I could limit the amount of sources down to like 8 or 16, and that would just impose the limit of sounds that could be playted simultaneously. I'm hoping it will also help the CPU and memory consumption too.   