[openal] Extending max source gain

[Chris Robinson]

I've had a few requests for this now, and have always been a bit stumped 
by the design decision. Currently, according to the spec, the source's 
AL_GAIN property can be set to anything >= 0, including 2, 4, etc. 
However, sources also have the AL_MAX_GAIN property which clamps the 
source's gain, but can only be set up to 1, meaning a source's gain will 
always be clamped to 1 even though an app can set it to something greater.

Another thing is that the spec says (section 4.1, under AL_GAIN):
"the implementation is free to clamp the total gain (effective gain 
per-source multiplied by the listener gain) to one to prevent overflow."
This further makes me wonder why AL_MAX_GAIN is limited to 1, since 
implementations are allowed to implicitly clamp the total as needed anyway.

Currently, it is possible to work around this limitation by increasing 
the listener's AL_GAIN above 1. Since the listener gain is applied after 
clamping, a source's effective gain can be made greater than 1 if the 
implementation doesn't implicitly clamp the total (and if it does, it's 
still as loud as it can be). This workaround is pretty hacky, though.

I'd like to propose the following. Allow AL_MAX_GAIN (and AL_MIN_GAIN, 
since it's a companion property) to be set to values greater than 1. 
Since the implementation can clamp the total anyway, why not FLT_MAX?

Further, it may be useful to have a query (retrieved via alGetFloat and 
friends) to specify the total maximum gain a source may be clamped to by 
the implementation, rather than leaving it as a hidden detail. That way, 
an app can know what limits there are for the combined gains, such that 
increasing it beyond said limit won't make it any louder.