Audio: OpenAL vs FMOD + Separate forum for beginners?

News & General Discussion
1

Wouldn’t it make sense to have one forum for beginners to ask questions, and another for advanced users to hold discussions?

Currently the main help forum is insanely busy.

Anyway, my question: why does Unity use FMOD not OpenAL?

OpenAL would seem to be perfect for 3-D positional audio: it is after all designed for gaming!

Also OSX has a very advanced implementation of OpenAL (this post)

π

2

I was actually been tossing between FMOD and OpenAL for my C++ game framework a couple of days ago.

In the end I chose FMOD. It is easier to use (to me), is updated on a regular basis (OpenAL has not been updated for years), and from what I have read, OpenAL has some compatibility issues (because of buggy drivers).

I am not saying OpenAL is bad, just for me FMOD was a better choice.