Sound Programming

I want to write a software synthesizer. I understand concepts like samples, the basic math, etc. I just need to learn a sound API now so I can actually hear something.

Which one is the least retarded to work with? Cross-platform would be a plus, but I wouldn't mind using DirectSound if it's easy to work with. SDL is pretty retarded.

>>26
That's possible, but IIRC the crippling was just lack of support for something. (It may have been callback support. Some people would consider lacking callback support to be 'crippling'.) I am fairly certain that one of the Buzz clones had used portaudio on Windows at one point without any issues.

It has occurred to me that if you just want to make sound, the fastest solution may be to write it as a plugin and use a host application to deal with the shenanigans. It would also be more useful to others that way, if you care about that.