shevalier wrote on 2026-01-15, 12:32:I don't remember where I read that OpenAL does not have a built-in garbage collector for unused buffers.
That is, they must firs […]
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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-15, 12:19:
shevalier wrote on 2026-01-15, 12:14:
This will provide a more complete description of your screenshot.
So in your screenshot it's using 127-69=58 hardware buffers? Like I said, it may vary based on which map is loaded, how many enemies are on the screen, and how the soundstage of the area was designed.
Without a real time monitoring tool, we can't exclude the possibility that the game uses up to the advertised 124 hardware voices simultaneously under certain circumstances. I'm guessing that might happen during heavy firefights, or possibly in multiplayer matches. But again, this is just me speculating. Without real time monitoring, there's no way to be sure.
I don't remember where I read that OpenAL does not have a built-in garbage collector for unused buffers.
That is, they must first be manually initialised, used, and then closed.
The number obtained from AIDA is the number of pre-initialised buffers linked to sources.
Whether data is flowing into them or they have simply not been closed is something only the game engine developers can say.
https://www.openal.org/documentation/OpenAL_P … mmers_Guide.pdf
There is no GC. If the buffer state goes bad, it stays bad - not a real world problem because audio programmers are very specific.
The OpenAL approach is the same on all systems, but the systems behave differently:
- XP initialises the endpoints once so the audio paths persist - it was possible to programme a DSP, download microcode, set states, etc.
- Vista clobbers and reinitialises the endpoints periodically - this is what makes hardware offloading on Vista impossibly hard, and why Creative stopped selling hardware DSPs for games.
This is why ct_oal.dll and soft_oal.dll only tell you how a pathway started (same on both systems), not how it ended (different on both systems).
If Creative solved the Vista puzzle then why did Creative abandon their solution, and why has nobody else solved it since? And, why did so many people complain that Creative had not solved it?
What all these threads show is people blaming Creative. Only a few on Vogons thought to blame Microsoft!
Creative's big mistake was to try to work with the impossible. They should have instead released a Gold Final Super Pack for WinXP as a send-off, and then continued on Linux. They would have become smaller, but never as small as Vista+ made them.
Sadly, due to having only Vista+ drivers, my X-Fi Titanium HD THX is a beautiful lemon - an anomaly that existed only for the small number of users who didn't see Microsoft's trap.
