Quote:No, most effect plugins are standard user-level programs that just take a stream of data in and a stream of data out. You can change pretty much all these effects in 'real-time' providing you're not expecting zero latency (which you won't get on Windows anyway).
So it is possible to have real time binaural sound?
In that case, we'll go ahead and research DirectSound and learn more about how to use sound buffers. If we have anymore questions we will repost.
This depends entirely on your definition of 'real time'. You cannot get zero-latency sound on Windows, though with ASIO drivers you can probably get it down to a single digit number of milliseconds. Some operations that work on sound require no forward buffering (eg. a typical delay effect) and so they won't affect anything. Some operations however (eg. convolution reverbs) require transformations of a certain amount of data, which necessarily imposes a certain amount of latency.
No problem then really - almost any method of sending the sound will work. The only constraint you have is whether it takes longer to process the sound than to send it, and that's very unlikely unless you're using several slow algorithms on it. Multi-track audio software can perform multiple calculations on a double-digit number of tracks, including running various effects on them such as reverb, delay, equalisation, etc, and still mix it all down at 24bit/96KHz faster than it's consumed by the sound card.
