DirectX Audio Exposed: Interactive Audio Development [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Todd M. Fay (Author), Scott Selfon (Author), Todor J. Fay (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 25, 2003

The de facto resource on interactive sound and music creation for Windows, this book covers topics important to musicians and sound designers.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Todd M. Fay (aka LAX) is a business and production consultant working in and around the game, music, and television industries. His passion for music and interactive entertainment brought together the best of the best in the world of cutting-edge audio in DirectX 9 Audio Exposed.

Todor J. Fay (no relation to Todd Fay) drove the vision and design of DirectMusic at Microsoft and ultimately managed DirectX Audio API development. An industry expert, Todor is passionately dedicated to bridging the worlds of art and technology. After leaving Microsoft, Todor co-founded NewBlue Inc., an interactive technologies developer and consultancy.

Scott Selfon is the Xbox audio content consultant and has assisted with nearly 100 individual games. He was previously the DirectMusic Producer and DirectX Audio Scripting test lead, and has also worked on interactive web site sonification projects.

Product Details

• Paperback: 550 pages
• Publisher: Wordware Publishing, Inc. (October 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556222882
• ISBN-13: 978-1556222887
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,490,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #36 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Graphics & Multimedia > DirectX

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars perhaps should be called "DirectMusic Exposed"..., October 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: DirectX Audio Exposed: Interactive Audio Development (Paperback)

Not much in here about DirectSound so it's slightly misnamed, but this book serves well as a long overdue, comprehensive tutorial on Microsoft's rather arcane interactive music playback and authoring system, DirectMusic, that ships as part of the DirectX API's.

DirectMusic is probably so little-known because when one first looks at it from either the content or the development side it's a little bit like stumbling into a secret treasure trove, complete with gaping bottomless pits and monsters, with no map, no light and no idea how far down the rabbit hole you have to go to learn your way around. This book provides both a map and a torch, but you'll still have to do the legwork to learn your way around.

If you still get lost, at least the accompanying CD provides you with a very cool demo of some DirectMusic by King Crimson (somehow that's no surprise given their avant garde tendencies these past three decades) to help pass the time spent studying your map and exploring the trackless caverns of this extremely complex, but potentially revolutionary musical technology.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good for games/music - bad for sound/audio, April 5, 2005

By 

J. Smyth "Renegade" (Seoul) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: DirectX Audio Exposed: Interactive Audio Development (Paperback)

Lots of good information for game programming, but nothing useful for general audio programming with Direct Sound. Judging from what I had read about the book, I thought there would be more meat in it on the Direct Sound interface, but there wasn't. There is lots in it if you are doing games and will have sound that you just need to playback, but if you need to do any audio processing with Direct Sound, that isn't in the book. It could really have benefitted from some interface documentation (perhaps an in an appendix) and a bit more low level stuff, especially on effects processing.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only for beginners, July 24, 2005

By 

SE "sweetangelpk2" (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: DirectX Audio Exposed: Interactive Audio Development (Paperback)

Compared to DirectX graphics, Directx Audio gets little spotlight. DirectX programming is known to be complex. This book does a good job in making DirectX (audio) more accessible to beginners.
Here is my rating on the Content (5=Best):

Accuracy: (4.5/5) So far, I have found minor ommissions in the text. However, the sample code is good enough.
Coverage (4/5)The book, as some other reviews pointed out, focuses more on directmusic than direct audio programming. Maybe its just me, but I was expecting more programmer-oriented text. I only found 50% of the book applicable to my programming work.
If you are considering buying this book, please check the table of contents. The direct music part is useful if you are considering composing music and/or need some basic understanding of computer sound.
Completeness (3/5). This is by no means a complete reference for directx. Keep the SDK documentation handy.
The author also fails to explain at times the rationale behind chosing the particular parameters values for various function calls. Expect to do some googling if you plan to understand the code insideo out.
Style (5/5): The author's explaination is very clear and concise. A beginner to directx should have no trouble following the text.
Overall: 5/5 if you have never touched directx before. 4/5 if you have previous experience with directx programming. You are better off with premier's game audio programming book.