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irrKlang Features



irrKlang is a powerful high level API for playing back sound in 3D and 2D applications like games, scientific visualizations and multimedia applications. irrKlang is free for non commercial use. There is also an advanced version of irrKlang named '
irrKlang pro' which can be purchased for a small license fee and may be used in commercial products.

Supported File Formats


irrKlang currently plays back the following file formats:

 ● RIFF WAVE (*.wav)
 ● Ogg Vorbis (*.ogg)
 ● MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (*.mp3)
[2]
 ● Free Lossless Audio Codec (*.flac)
 ● Amiga Modules (*.mod)
 ● Impulse Tracker (*.it)
 ● Scream Tracker 3 (*.s3d)
 ● Fast Tracker 2 (*.xm)

irrKlang uses its own decoders, and is independed of the operating system when playing back those, meaning your app will work nicely on all the operating system configurations of your users. Meaning for example when Microsoft should decide to remove their built-in MP3-decoder from Windows, your app still will work as before.

It is easily possible to extend the playable file formats using plugins.

[2]: MP3 playback is done via a plugin which comes along with irrKlang (and its full source code) so that it is easily possible to remove mp3 support if wished.


Supported Platforms


irrKlang is cross platform and works for the programmer the same, independent of the platform it is running on. The following platforms are currently supported together with the corresponding sound output backends:

 ● Windows (98, ME, NT 4, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11 via DirectSound 3, DirectSound 8, WinMM)
 ● Linux / *nix (via ALSA)
 ● macOS (x64, x8, PPC[3], compiles with macOs SDK 10.6 via CoreAudio)

The sound library works with all supported platforms the in the same way, the programmer only has to write his game/application code once, and it will run on all supported platforms without the need of changing one single line of code.

[3]: Currently, the PowerPC version does not support module file (.mod, .it, .s3m, .xm) playback. All other features are supported.


3D Sound


irrKlang has built-in support for 3D sound on all platforms and audio drivers. It was designed to be used in 3D games, so it is very efficient and does not use a lot of CPU time. The screenshot below shows irrKlang running inside irrEdit, a 3D world editor.



irrKlang is able to play short buffered sounds (e.g. gun shots) as well as huge, streamed sounds (e.g. a radio mp3) in 3D. A conversion to mono sounds is not necessary here, irrKlang is able to do this on the fly. Additional 3D features are:

Fast 3D audio on low end hardware: Because some low end audio hardware is not able to play 3D sounds without significant performance loss or some don't support 3d audio buffers at all, irrKlang has a high performance 3d sound buffer emulator built-in, causing a sound experience nearly as it was a real 3d sound buffer.

Multiple rolloff models: irrKlang supports linear as well as logarithmic rolloff.

All 3D sounds may of course be combined with the available sound effects such as echo and reverb.



Example Applications


The irrKlang SDK includes not only tutorials and a detailed API documentation, there are also some useful example applications:

The screenshot above shows one of the example applications. This one is named 'irrKlang Player' and runs on all operating systems where irrKlang is available (the image above shows Mac OS X, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Ubuntu, in this order). Its full source code is available in the
irrKlang SDK.


Sound Effects


In addition to the doppler effect for 3D sounds irrKlang currently supports the following sound effects, both for 3D and 2D sounds:

 ● Chorus
 ● Compressor
 ● Distortion
 ● Echo
 ● Flanger
 ● Gargle
 ● Interactive 3D Audio Level 2 reverberation
 ● Parametric Equalizer effects
 ● Waves Reverb

It is possible to disable and enable these effects during playback for every single sound, and to adjust parameters of the effects easily also if it is already active. (Currently, these effects are only available when using the DirectSound8 driver.)


Simple API


IrrKlang has an extremely simple API. The following two examples show how to start up the engine and play an MP3 file in C++ and in C#:
Playing an MP3 in C++
#include <iostream>
#include <irrKlang.h>
using namespace irrklang;
int main(int argc, const char** argv) { // start the sound engine with default parameters ISoundEngine* engine = createIrrKlangDevice();

if (!engine)
return 0; // error starting up the engine
// play some sound stream, looped engine->play2D("somefile.mp3", true); char i = 0; std::cin >> i; // wait for user to press some key engine->drop(); // delete engine return 0; }
Playing an MP3 in C#
using IrrKlang; 

namespace HelloWorld
{
  class Example
  {
   [STAThread]
   static void Main(string[] args)
   {
     // start up the engine
     ISoundEngine engine = new ISoundEngine();

     // play a sound file
     engine.Play2D("somefile.mp3");

     // wait until user presses ok to end application
     System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(
	 	 	 "Playing, press ok to end.");

   } // end main()

  } // end class

} // end namespace



Features Summarized


It is a cross platform 2D and 3D sound engine and audio library, usable in C++ and all .NET languages (C#, VisualBasic.NET, etc) and provides useful features like lots of built-in file format decoders (wav, ogg, mp3, mod, xm, it, s3m...), a sophisticated streaming engine, extendable audio reading, single and multithreading modes, 3d audio emulation for low end hardware, a plugin system, multiple rolloff models and more. All this can be accessed via an extremely simple API.

irrKlang's current features are:
  • Plays multiple file formats, .WAV, .MP3, .OGG, .MOD, .XM, .IT, .S3M...
  • Buffered and streamed audio playback, in 2D and 3D.
  • irrKlang is platform independent: irrKlang runs on several operating systems including Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, Linux, Mac OS X (Intel as well as Power PC).
  • Incredible simple API
  • High level resource management and autodetection: The engine can do everything for you. Just tell it to play a sound file, and it will load, cache and/or stream sound data for you automaticly, depending on what is best for performance and memory usage. But if you want to specify how the engine should handle this, you can do this as well.
  • Sophisticated 3D sound engine designed to be used in games.
  • Extendable: Possibility to write own file format readers/decoders to extend the engine with it.
  • Sound effects such as the doppler effect for 3D sounds or 2D effects like echo, reverb, distortion, flanger and more.
  • Exact seeking and position retrieval in streams and buffered sounds.
  • Plugin System: Simply copy external created plugins to the place where irrKlang is being used and extend its functionality with it.
  • Works with multiple compilers including Microsofts VisualStudio 6.0™, VisualStudio.NET 7.0 - 2017, and with g++ 3 - 5 or newer, also with support for Code::Blocks and XCode.
  • Multi/Singlethreaded modes: The engine can run both multithreaded or singlethreaded in the same thread as your application, to make it possible to debug your application easier for example.
  • Low level audio output manipulation: Possibility to alter any aspect of a playing sound like panning, volume and 3d position.
  • Sound event call backs.
  • File reading functionality can be overwritten by the user, of course, making it possible to let irrKlang read from own file archives for example.





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