[openal] OpenAL Soft 1.16.0 released!

[Chris Robinson]

OpenAL Soft 1.16.0 is now available:

http://kcat.strangesoft.net/openal.html

This release has a number of EFX features now implemented (chorus, 
flanger, distortion, equalizer, and compressor effects, and the 
high-pass and band-pass filters), as well as SSE2 and SSE4.1 linear 
resamplers and a Neon-based non-HRTF mixer, and also a new QSA backend.

For Windows systems, device specifier strings are now UTF-8 and thus can 
support device names with Unicode characters. File paths that contain 
Unicode characters (such as the path to alsoft.ini, or a path specified 
for the hrtf_tables config option) also work.

For non-Windows systems, the XDG Base Directory Specification is now 
adhered to for alsoft.conf (XDG_CONFIG_DIRS and XDG_CONFIG_HOME), 
although the old locations are still recognized too.

A GUI configuration utility is also provided (requires Qt 4.8), which 
allows a more user-friendly interface for editing config options. Do 
note, though, that the utility is still kind of bare bones.. it won't 
warn about unsaved changes, and it will only display config options as 
specified in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alsoft.conf or %AppData%\alsonft.ini 
(global settings aren't currently factored into what's displayed or 
written to the local config).

The CMake option names have been changed so they better sort in cmake 
GUIs, and to reduce the risk of clashes if embedded into another project.

The default HRTF data set is now an external file. In addition, another 
one is provided for 48khz output (created using makehrtf's resample 
option), using the same KEMAR data source as the one for 44.1khz.


There's much more to this release, including improved locking behavior 
(so fewer AL calls will cause the mixer to block), bug fixes, and some 
internal code restructuring.


Future work will hopefully see some headway on supporting MIDI with an 
internal software synth (which if nothing else, will really test the 
mixer's ability to handle many sounds being mixed and updated with 
greater frequency than apps typically require). I'm also aiming to 
finish designing an HRTF extension that will allow apps to enumerate and 
enable data sets for itself, without requiring the user to enable it 
externally, and to allow it to work on loopback devices.


Also, I'm considering setting up a mirror for the git repo on github, 
where I can enable an issue tracker to better manage bugs and other 
issues that pop up. I've been wanting to get a bug tracker set up, and 
github seems to provide one in a simple and painless manner (this 
feeling may or may not change once I try using it).


Anyway, that's all for now. If there's any questions, concerns, or 
comments, please feel free to bring them up. Thanks!

- Chris

P.S. Apologies if I missed anything important, this release took longer 
than I expected to finish so I'm up a bit later than I would otherwise 
be. I believe I got everything, but if I missed something or if 
something doesn't seem right, let me know and I'll get on it ASAP.