Sound output approach for Sine waves in C

Question

I am looking for a means to play simple sine waves and other basic math functions in pure C, not C++/C#. Are there any libraries or methods to output actively to the sound card? Even more ideally to integrate soundfonts. Is this too cumbersome of an endeavor?

I am a C noob and want to learn more and expand in this area of programming. I have looked all over online and haven't found any clear examples or routes for this. Essentially I plan on making a rudimentary keyboard synth, ie: holding down q plays note A etc.

Any help or redirection would be appreciated.

Answer 1

It depends on which kinds of system you're targeting, but most modern Linux desktop distributions have PulseAudio installed as their highest-level audio interface, so you can use its simple API (in particular pa_simple_write()) to produce sound.

For soundfonts, I think FluidSynth's library is fairly popular.