Has anyone had any experience at all with OpenAL, good or bad. (http://www.openal.org). I''m looking at it as a DirectSound alternative for VC6. If you have any other ideas please post them here as well.

OpenAL is good if you want to do 3D sound without the effects DSound has to offer (reverb, distortion, etc). I personally gave up OpenAL when I realized I wanted to play MP3 audio in my game and didn''t see the point in implementing both API''s. OpenAL is by far easier to implement than DSound (and it uses DSound if available for playback in Windows, so there''s not much difference in quality). The rule of the thumb is, however - if you want to do game audio, you can safely stick to OpenAL, for more specific puropses, use DSound (gives you more control over things).

Hope this helps,
Crispy

Thanks