>> audio engine

 Its core operates in two distinct modes: using own high-quality software rendering, or hardware accelerated audio implemented by OS specific host API. iAuxSFX offers reach number of features to work with sound including 3D positioning, designing of advanced DSP effects and filters, building complex DSP network, capturing of audio with simultaneous encoding into supported compressed formats and much more! iAuxSFX is universal and well suited for any type of application development.

High-Quality 64-bit Rendering

Have you ever seen 64-bit software audio rendering in action!? iAuxSFX uses exclusive 64-bit software audio rendering core to deliver unified audio perception for any supported platform. Its advanced design utilizes true 64-bit floating point processing! For the low-end systems iAuxSFX has capability to fallback to 32 bits. Offline (non real-time) processing is also available for a high-quality processing that uses some complex chain of audio effects and filters.

DSP Network

Software rendering core is split between multiple elements - mixers, which can be interconnected thus maintaining a complex DSP network. Sound sources are capable of sending audio data to a multiple mixers simultaneously, mixers are routing to other sub-sets of mixers doing complex effect processing, resampling, combining for master mixer final output. Your possibilities are limitless!

Asynchronous/Threadless Core

iAuxSFX is driven by a fully asynchronous core. Each master mixer is driven by own thread, audio data which is supplied to hardware of software rendered buffers is streamed by a separate thread asynchronously from the rendering process, static sound loading is done also by a thread queue. All aspects of parallelism are applied inside the core of iAuxSFX. Besides that, you can switch all this off! And drive iAuxSFX on your own, in threadless mode.

Real-Time/Non-Real-Time Processing

iAuxSFX software rendering supports Real-Time (RT) and Non-RT processing modes. Non-RT processing allows to render and output to a file an audio using extremely complex processing which could never be done in real-time systems.

Software & Hardware (EAX/VST3) Effects

iAuxSFX provides minimal set of DSP effects and filters to do 3D environment simulation, including I3DL2 compatible Reverberator which will produce same audio on all supported platforms! Besides home-brew software effects and filters iAuxSFX library's API design allows to use EAX and VST3 effects.

VST3 Effects

iAuxSFX can be used as a host for VST3 effects including invocation of their GUI views and utilizing of 64-bit high-quality processing. VST3 effects participate in DSP Network as if native iAuxSFX's effects. Besides real-timeprocessing iAuxSFX offers offline (non real-time) high-quality rendering of final audio using VST3 effects chained by an attached DSP Network.
 

3D Sound

iAuxSFX features true 3D sound positioning technology. It can operate with mono, or multi-channel audio. 3D positioning core supports any possible speaker configuration starting from single (mono) systems and up to 7.1 Home Theater. iAuxSFX will put your listeners in an impressive 3D surrounding environment.

Directional Sound

iAuxSFX supports audio cone calculations for the own software rendering core. Audio cone can be set as for sound, making it a directional point emitter, and listener. You can tune your 3D audio environment and make it more realistic. For example, direct sound emitter to the opened window, and voila! player passing by this window will hear the sound less attenuated then outside the audio cone (outside window borders). The same is for listener, when in real life we are in most cases omni-directional it is still possible to set the directional audio cone and attenuate sounds which are out of it.

Automatic LPF Attenuation

To improve perception of the audio cone and make real-life audio absorption more natural iAuxSFX has possibility to apply low-pass filter automatically. All you need is to activate this feature during sound initialization step and core will take care of low-pass filtering of 3D sound when needed, no more manual work. Low-pass filter functionality conforms to I3DL2 specification.

Capturing

iAuxSFX supports advanced audio capturing. After audio is captured it can be re-routed into a complex DSP network for post-processing, like applying special type of effects and filters. Capturing API is flexible, for advanced use it provides ability to get and process PCM data in real-time, save it to any supported compressed format, simultaneously listen to audio being captured.

Plug-in Extensible

iAuxSFX functionality is easily extensible with custom plug-in modules. Plug-ins extend add support for more audio formats and codecs, implement additional output drivers for the master mixer and capturing.

Map-Manager

Do you know what Map-Manager is? No?! Well, this is a kind of system which is aimed to manage thousands of 3D sounds in the listener's environment. Map-Manager detects if 3D sound is too far (not heard anymore) from the listener and undertakes different actions: stops sound, frees memory occupied by audio buffers of the sound and does similar actions which are minimizing overall load to CPU and Memory. After 3D sound re-appears for the listener its state is restored and sound is again playing as if nothing happened to it.

Lua Scripting

iAuxSFX provides additional Lua scripting functionality that expands possibilities of sound event management and parameters tuning. Lua scripts can individually be attached to sounds, or sound banks, or be completely global to audio sub-system. Scripting allows to randomize sound parameters bringing more versatile experience to a gaming application.

Sound Banks

Used for grouping of multiple sounds into a single file. Sound bank supports customized on-load Lua scripting and unifies audio data format of encapsulated sounds into a single bank audio format. Any supported audio format can be used as a host bank format. Sound entries are categorized by name and bank index for easier development.

Multi-Instancing

This feature is valuable for a gaming application with multiple, frequent sound events, like shooting, jumping and similar. Multi-instancing allows to set how many instances of single sound can be heard at a time, then application is capable of playing sound as many times as number of sound instances are. When limit of currently playing instances is reached iAuxSFX automatically reuses instances in FIFO order. The complexity of the issue is completely hidden from the developer's eyes.

Voice-Chat

iAuxSFX can act as complete turn-key Voice-Chat client and server. It utilizes iAuxNET internally for the high-performance networking core to provide lowest possible playback latency over the network. You can choose to utilize either TCP or UDP transport protocols. There is no dependency on 3-rd party external middleware and iAuxSFX provides autonomous features rich voice-chat functionality.

Mobile Platform

iAuxSFX software rendering core is universal, lightweihgt and fast! It can run virtually on any CPU and thus we provide support for the popular mobile platforms - Windows Mobile 6/6.5, iOS(iPhone/iPad/iPod) and Android with full, uncut functionality.

 

Features

High-quality 32/64-bit software rendering (real-time/offline).

Any possible speaker configuration from 1.0 (mono, phone speaker) to 7.1 (home theater).

Advanced DSP network with pluggable functionality.

3D positioning of single/multi-channel audio sources.

Sound bank support.

Lua scripting of sound parameters and events.

Automatic management of attenuated objects with Map-Manager.

Asynchronous multi-threading core with capability to operate in threadless mode.

Advanced audio capturing with simultaneous post-processing, encoding, re-routing, listening.

Plug-in extensible.

Mobile platform support: Windows Mobile 6/6.5, iPhone, Android.

Interface language: C++ (C optional).

Compiler/IDE support: Microsoft Visual Studio for C++, XCode, GCC 4.x (Windows/Linux/Mac).

Advanced API design with rich inline documentation.

Built-in formats: WAV (8/16/24/32 bit PCM, IMA ADPCM, MS ADPCM, U-Law, A-Law), AU (8/16/24/32/64 bit PCM, IMA ADPCM, U-Law, A-Law), MP2, MP3, OGG, FLAC, SPEEX, XM, IT, MOD, S3M.

OS: Windows XP/Vista/7 (32/64 bit), Windows Mobile 6 (ARMv4), Windows Mobile 6.5.3 (ARMv5), Linux (32/64 bit), MacOSX 10.5+ (x86 32/64 bit, ppc), iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod-Device/Emulator), Android (Device/Emulator)

* VST is a trademark and software of Steinberg MediaTechnologies GmbH