irrKlang tutorial: Sound Effects (C#)

This example will show how to use sound effects such as echo, reverb and distortion. irrKlang.NET supports the effects Chorus, Compressor, Distortion, Echo, Flanger Gargle, 3DL2Reverb, ParamEq and WavesReverb.

Let's start

At the beginning, we simply create a class and add the namespace IrrKlang in which all sound engine methods are located.

using System;
using IrrKlang;

namespace CSharp._05.SoundEffects
{
  class Class1
  {
    [STAThread]
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {

Now let's start with the irrKlang 3D sound engine example 05, demonstrating sound effects. Simply startup the engine with default options/parameters.

    // start the sound engine with default parameters
    ISoundEngine engine = new ISoundEngine();

Now we play a .xm file as music here. Note that the last parameter named 'enableSoundEffects' has been set to 'true' here. If this is not done, sound effects cannot be used with this sound. After this, we print some help text and start a loop which reads user keyboard input.

    ISound music = engine.Play2D("../../media/MF-W-90.XM", false,
                                false, StreamMode.AutoDetect, true);

    // Print some help text and start the display loop

    Console.Out.Write("\nSound effects example. Keys:\n");
    Console.Out.Write("\nESCAPE: quit\n");
    Console.Out.Write("w: enable/disable waves reverb\n");
    Console.Out.Write("d: enable/disable distortion\n");
    Console.Out.Write("e: enable/disable echo\n");
    Console.Out.Write("a: disable all effects\n");

    while(true) // endless loop until user exits
    {
      int key = _getch();

      // Handle user input: Every time the user presses a key in the console,
      // play a random sound or exit the application if he pressed ESCAPE.

      if (key == 27)
        break; // user pressed ESCAPE key
      else
      {

We get the ISoundEffectControl interface, but this only exists if the sound driver supports sound effects and if the sound was started setting the 'enableSoundeffects' flag to 'true' as we did above.

        ISoundEffectControl fx = null;
        if (music != null)
          fx = music.SoundEffectControl;

        if (fx == null)
        {
          // some sound devices do not support sound effects.
          Console.Out.Write("This device or sound does not support sound effects.\n");
          continue;
        }

Now we disable or enable the sound effects of the music depending on what key the user pressed. Note that every enableXXXSoundEffect() method also accepts a lot of parameters, so it is easily possible to influence the details of the effect. If the sound effect is already active, it is also possible to simply call the enableXXXSoundEffect() method again to just change the effect parameters, although we aren't doing this here.

        if (key < 'a') // make key lower
          key += 'a' - 'A';

        switch(key)
        {
        case 'd':
          if (fx.IsDistortionSoundEffectEnabled)
            fx.DisableDistortionSoundEffect();
          else
            fx.EnableDistortionSoundEffect();
          break;

        case 'e':
          if (fx.IsEchoSoundEffectEnabled)
            fx.DisableEchoSoundEffect();
          else
            fx.EnableEchoSoundEffect();
          break;

        case 'w':
          if (fx.IsWavesReverbSoundEffectEnabled)
            fx.DisableWavesReverbSoundEffect();
          else
            fx.EnableWavesReverbSoundEffect();
          break;

        case 'a':
          fx.DisableAllEffects(); 
          break;
        }
      }
    }
  }

The program is now nearly finished, we just need some functions for reading from the console, but this doesn't have anything to do with irrKlang.

    // simple functions for reading keys from the console
    [System.Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("msvcrt")]
    static extern int _kbhit();
    [System.Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("msvcrt")]
    static extern int _getch();
  }
}

That's it.
Download tutorial source and binary (included in the SDK)