Audio middleware
Software theme
Alternate names: Sound engines, Audio libraries
Audio middleware are not necessarily full-blown sound engines.
Parent group
This is a container group; its children are:
| Advanced Linux Sound Architecture | A Linux sound architecture. (too short) | 2000 / 2021 | 19 games |
| AstoundSound | A 3D audio spatialization solution that besides providing 360 degree directional cues horizontally, also includes cues for ±90 degree vertical. | 1 game | |
| Audiere | A high-level and extremely simplistic audio API. (too short) | 2005 / 2017 | 6 games |
| Aureal 3D | A 3D positional audio API that competed with EAX before being bought out by Creative. (too short) | 1998 / 2006 | 30 games |
| CriWare | An audio, video and lip sync middleware by CRI Middlware. (too short) | 2001 / 2021 | 654 games |
| DirectMusic | A deprecated subset of the DirectSound API that allowed high level access to hardware through DirectSound. Not available to 64-bit systems. | 2000 / 2004 | 8 games |
| Dynamic Universal Music Bibliotheque | DUMB is an IT, XM, S3M and MOD player library developed by Robert J Ohannessian, Julien Cugnière and Ben Davis. | 2001 / 2016 | 21 games |
| Environmental Audio Extensions | Any version of Creative's EAX. (too short) | 1998 / 2009 | 39 games |
| Fabric Audio | Fabric is middleware that extends the audio capability of the Unity engine. (too short) | 1 game | |
| FMOD audio engine | A cross-platform audio engine by Firelight Technologies. (too short) | 2000 / 2021 | 257 games |
| GameCODA | Audio middleware by Sensaura. (too short) | 2002 / 2006 | 7 games |
| iMUSE | An interactive/adaptive music engine by LucasArts. (too short) | 1991 / 2015 | 19 games |
| irrKlang audio library | A cross-platform audio library/API by Ambiera. (too short) | 2008 / 2012 | 14 games |
| Interactive Spatial Audio Composition Technology | An audio middleware by Creative. (too short) | 1 game | |
| Mikmod | Mikmod is a sound module player and library supporting many formats, including mod, s3m, it, and xm (too short) | 2007 / 2012 | 6 games |
| Miles Sound System | Sound middleware originally by Miles Design to overcome the differences in soundcards in the old DOS days. Maintained by RAD Game Tools since 1995. | 1992 / 2016 | 213 games |
| OpenAL | Cross-platform audio API for multichannel 3D positional audio originally by Loki Software. (too short) | 1997 / 2021 | 621 games |
| Open Sound Library for Embedded Systems | A royalty-free, cross-platform, hardware-accelerated audio C-language API tuned for embedded systems by Khronos Group. | 2009 / 2011 | 1 game |
| DART | A sound API & corresponding DLL that allows OS/2 applications to have multiple levels of direct access to audio hardware. | 1997 / 2006 | 22 games |
| Open Sound System | An Unix sound architecture. Largely superseded by ALSA which includes an OSS emulation layer. (too short) | 1998 / 2016 | 16 games |
| PulseAudio | A cross-platform sound system for POSIX operating systems. (too short) | 2003 / 2017 | 7 games |
| QSound | Uses QSound Labs' cross-platform audio API. (too short) | 1992 / 2015 | 52 games |
| RealSound | A software solution for PC speaker audio to output 6-bit audio. Created by Steve Witzel, and patented (US US5054086 A) by Access Software. | 1988 / 1993 | 11 games |
| RSX 3D Audio API | Uses the RSX 3D API for audio output. (too short) | 1 game | |
| SDL_mixer | Uses SDL's very basic audio API for sound. (too short) | 1998 / 2012 | 16 games |
| SpeechFX | A variety of speech recognition (voice command/control) middleware. (too short) | 3 games | |
| Wwise | An audio engine - and associated development tools - by Audiokinetic. (too short) | 2010 / 2020 | 59 games |
| DirectX Audio | (too short) | 1999 / 2019 | 21 games |