Our View

We view OpenAL as a state machine that controls a multichannel processing system to synthesize a digital stream, passing sample data through a chain of parametrized digital audio signal processing operations. This model should engender a specification that satisfies the needs of both programmers and implementors. It does not, however, necessarily provide a model for implementation. Any conformant implementation must produce results conforming to those produced by the specified methods, but there may be ways to carry out a particular computation that are more efficient than the one specified.