psai vs SoLoud

psai® is an interactive music engine for videogames, aimed at composers and developers creating adaptive soundtracks. Its playback logic can change intensity, recombine musical segments, pause, and respond to gameplay. The Unity edition is written in C# without native code, and the maker says it works on all Unity target platforms. The native C++ SDK is limited to Windows, with evaluation or licensing inquiries directed to the maker. The regular and Pro editions use the same Unity engine; Pro adds the standalone editor for creating projects from scratch. That editor is listed for Win/Mac and requires Music Engine Pro and Pro User Registration. Downloads include a demo soundtrack and eight free music themes. The maker says Unity use across a customer's projects has no further costs or royalties, with one copy required per company seat. However, the editor EULA limits users who have not purchased the engine through the Unity Asset Store to non-commercial editor use, including testing for future commercial use. The site also links to manuals, API documentation, tutorials, and a Unity forum.

SoLoud is a free, portable C/C++ audio engine for games, built around a fire-and-forget playback interface. Playback handles let developers adjust volume, pan and relative speed. The engine includes multiple voices, faders, real-time filters, mixing busses, gapless looping, queued sounds and atomic operations for several sounds. It supports 3D positional audio and up to eight surround speakers.

Supported sources include several WAV variants, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, tracker formats and emulator sources. The package includes speech synthesis and an Sfxr sound-effects synthesizer. SoLoud runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and the web through Emscripten, with backends including SDL/SDL2, MiniAudio, ALSA, JACK, OpenAL and WASAPI. A C API DLL provides access from environments including Python, Ruby, C#, BlitzMax and GameMaker Studio. Its ZLib/LibPNG license permits commercial use, modification and redistribution subject to attribution and source-notice conditions. The project notes limited engine integration and no artist tools.