OpenAL vs. FMOD

[Sardtok]

Hi, I haven't yet started working on my sound framework and I probably won't for a couple of weeks still, but I like to plan ahead (for some reason coding is just so much more efficient that way, hehe)...
Well, I was thinking of having background music in the game, and FMOD kind of seems like the obvious choice here, considering it's capable of loading just about any format (I could just use an old mod or xm file I have lying around for testing, and later on I could use an mp3 or ogg file for the final game)...
But OpenAL seems a lot nicer for sound fx, like shots and explosions and whatever...

So can I combine the two, or is this problematic?
If I choose to use both, is there anything I need to watch out for, like generating too many sources in AL and blocking out FMOD(of course other than this exact issue)?
Are there any good reasons to get a loader and use OpenAL for music playback instead of FMOD?
Are there any good reasons for using FMOD for sound fx instead of OpenAL?

I think this should cover just about everything, but if you think there are any obvious questions that I should have asked, then please feel free to answer them too...

Thanks.

[Matzon]

If you are going to do a framework - and it's not for world+dog, I would suggest to go with openal. OpenAL + misc. libraries can play exactly the same as fmod, however with some more work. You cannot do stuff like controlling dc player and stuff like that.
It will also save you some money. FMOD is free if your application is too - else it's 100$ for hobbyists (cheap!) . or $1000+ for full scale.

[Sardtok]

I'm making freeware, which is part of the reason why I'm considering using FMOD...
I guess I could use Tom's OggInputStream to read oggs and play them in OpenAL...
But are there any ways to read a spectrum or something in OpenAL, like you can in FMOD, not that I need it for my game, but it could be useful for future productions, or just for making a nice visualization in-game.

And what's dc player?
I expect you mean I can't do rewind, fast forward, pause and jumping to positions?
Couldn't that be done by manipulating the byte buffers that you are streaming?
Although I don't need such features, I just want to be able to play and loop music, and cross-fade between two tracks during music changes, which should be simple enough if I use two sources for playing the music, just changing the volume on the two.

[Matzon]

dc player = cd player

[Sardtok]

Aha...

And I found the ibxm library for loading mod and xm while looking through Kevin Glass' Free Example Code Kit ( http://www.cokeandcode.com/feck ).
So I guess I'll have to consider adding support for mod and xm as well.