Ah cool, thanks for this perspective. You're right that what we have is astounding already, quite a feat. As a C2 fan, I merely seek to help improve the engine, though obviously I have very little knowledge of its inner workings. That's where discussion helps me.
First is that what you are looking for is a change on how the sound is rendered, by the system, not a change in the C2 engine, or better described as a hack.
I think I get where you're going, but I don't see it as a change in how the sound is rendered. In a C2 game, if you were to fade an object out before destroying it, is that a change in how objects are destroyed? You are merely using the system how it's supposed to be used to achieve a result more useable within the scope of your product. Put another way, just because there is a System.StopAudio() doesn't mean that MyGameEngine.StopAudio() is restricted to solely calling System.StopAudio(). There are specific needs the game engine has, among which are aesthetically pleasing audio playback. I am suggesting a change in C2's Audio > Stop, not the system's core implementation of audio rendering.
[quote:2u1jdq9c]Second, the kind of timing precision you want isn't there, especially on mobile. You'll be lucky to get 0.1 ms.
Yeah, I didn't think of this too much. "0.1 ms" precision? That doesn't sound too bad for a fade-out that must occur in less than a frame of 16ms. Honestly, anything to reduce the harshness of the click is beneficial I feel.
[quote:2u1jdq9c]Thirdly, this is why we have polyphony.
Haha, yeah but there is still a definite need in games to stop certain sound samples from overlapping, just as there is a need to prevent certain images from overlapping. You wouldn't say "that's why we have layers". There is obviously such a thing as aesthetics, and it can apply to audio just as much as it can to visuals.
[quote:2u1jdq9c]Also theres nothing wrong with using an even shorter sound for that type of situation.
The sound in the demo was exaggerated to demonstrate the effect. Consider a real game like Super Mario World when he's flying through a bunch of coins. Look at how neatly the sound effect repeats for each coin, how it cuts off the previous one. Even if they had the full polyphonic capabilities of today they wouldn't have let them play together. Letting those sounds play together creates this muddy kind of reverb-y, sloppy sound, characteristic of amateur fan-made platformers. It's very disgusting. A shorter sound is not the solution, or the coin wouldn't have the rewarding effect it does when you get one. I mean, come on, unless you're just a programmer, you know that game design and development is art! And artists are picky people. Lots of subtleties to think about. The engine shouldn't require us to make compromises on something that can be fixed.
Anyway, I'm up way past my bedtime. Perhaps the -100db solution is fine. But hopefully this is something to think about, because there is basically no reason I see for someone wanting the risk of that click when they call Audio > Stop.