[openal] Question About soft_oal.dll vs. OpenAL32.dll

[Chris Robinson]

On 08/31/2016 03:13 PM, Tommy Scott wrote:
> However, when my Unity application tries to access
> my plugin that uses OpenAL Soft, it attaches to the OpenAL32.dll instead
> of soft_oal.dll. I renamed my OpenAL32.dll and put soft_oal.dll in the
> same location, but now it complains that it can't load the dll at all. So,
> it's definitely not recognizing the soft_oal.dll. What could I be doing
> wrong?

Hi.

Normally when you link to OpenAL on Windows, it will look for 
OpenAL32.dll. The usual OpenAL32.dll (distributed by Creative's 
installer) is really a router that looks for other *oal.dll drivers, and 
allows apps to access them all through one interface. So with 
soft_oal.dll, the router will provide OpenAL Soft devices in addition to 
the ones provided by other *oal.dll drivers.

If you want just OpenAL Soft without the router, you should rename 
soft_oal.dll to OpenAL32.dll, and place it with the app. If it has 
trouble loading the DLL, make sure you have the correct version (the 
32-bit DLL for 32-bit apps, and the 64-bit DLL for 64-bit apps; note 
that both the 32-bit and 64-bit DLLs are called OpenAL32.dll, for 
compatibility reasons).