what is openAL and what sound cards use it?

[BlueEyedBeezlebub]

? never grasped the concept, same thing as opengl for audio?

 

[XeonTux]

from http://www.openal.org/about/

OpenAL, the Open Audio Library, is a joint effort to create an open, vendor-neutral, cross-platform API for interactive, primarily spatialized audio. OpenAL's primary audience are application developers and desktop users that rely on portable standards like OpenGL, for games and other multimedia applications. OpenAL is already supported by a number of hardware vendors and developers.

For more on OpenGL see http://www.opengl.org/ much better than DirectX because it will be portable and not limited to crappy OSs from the makers of directx