   (OpenAL) Playing MP3 File
  Hey guys, I'm aware about the legal stuff of MP3 encoding/decoding, however, I'd like to know if any of you know the functions or if you have any information on playing an MP3 file in OpenAL. I've seen OGG tutorials, and I'm going to use that as well, but I'd like to know how to do it with MP3. Thanks guys for any help you can give me.   
  OpenAL (under Windows) does not handle MP3 files natively. You will need to decode the mp3 to pcm to play it. You could also use another library, such as FMOD, if you wanted to.   ;  Yeah I forgot to say, I've heard of FMOD, however, I was leaning more towards OpenAL. Is FMOD easy with this sort of stuff? Also, could you please explain how I could do this thing you said, what do I need? Any tutorials/docs? Thanks.   ;  Sorry, I don't have any experience with FMOD and very little with OAL. I wouldn't know how to decode the MP3, and actually I think the decoding process is patented so you'd have to pay royalties if you did write one. FMOD is free for non-commercial use and I've seen people use it, so I suppose it's not that bad. Is there a compelling reason why you don't want to use OGG?Edit: also look into SMPEG, maybe you can just use that to get at the PCM data.   ;  I was just wondering about the MP3, but yeah I guess I will use OGG. Does FMOD support OGG? Cause OpenAL doesn't (natively) from what I've seen and I need the vorgbis/OGG SDK. Is fmod as hard as OpenAL?   ;  Yes, fmod supports ogg, mp3, and about 20 other formats. They also claim in their feature list that ogg sounds better than mp3, heh. But going commercial will be out of the question, because the fmod license for commercial projects is 2,000 to 4,000 USD. There's an OpenAL extension (EXT_vorbis) for OGG, but as you say I think you also need the ogg/vorbis sdk, if only to get the vorbis library dll's. But you won't have to do the decoding yourself, afaik you can just make OAL do all the dirty work for you. Otherwise, if I'm wrong about that, there's always the ogg/oal tutorial that's right here at gamedev.Can't offer difficulty comparison, due to lack of experience. I can't imagine FMOD being less confusing though, due to apparently supporting more features. But hang in there. Any API might seem confusing at first but you'll likely appreciate all that source/buffer/position mumbo-jumbo later on.   ;Quote:Original post by lightbringerYes, fmod supports ogg, mp3, and about 20 other formats. They also claim in their feature list that ogg sounds better than mp3, heh. But going commercial will be out of the question, because the fmod license for commercial projects is 2,000 to 4,000 USD. Just to clarify: while the commerical price for using FMOD is a couple of thousand dollars, there is an shareware licence available for US$100, although I think according to the wording of the licence you have to be working by yourself, and you have to be approved as a shareware/budget seller.And FMOD is free if you plan to release your game for free.As for how easy it is to use, I've only used FMOD for the simple playing of music and sound effects, but it's extremely simple to use for that (I haven't tried OpenAL yet so I can't compare the difficulty). I learnt how to have FMOD up and running for simple stuff in under an hour.   