The idea behind OpenAL is a 3d positional spatialized sound library analogous to OpenGL: instead of micromanaging each aspect of sound playback and effect, the application writer may limit themselves to placing the sounds in the scene and letting the native OpenAL implementation determine the correct amount of pitch alteration, gain attenuation, phase shift, etc, required to render the sounds correctly. That's the goal, anyway. WWW: http://www.openal.org/