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   6 .TH AUDIO 7D "Aug 3, 2009"
   7 .SH NAME
   8 audio \- common audio framework
   9 .SH DESCRIPTION
  10 .sp
  11 .LP
  12 The \fBaudio\fR driver provides common support routines for audio devices in
  13 Solaris.
  14 .sp
  15 .LP
  16 The audio framework supports multiple \fBpersonalities\fR, allowing for devices
  17 to be accessed with different programming interfaces.
  18 .sp
  19 .LP
  20 The audio framework also provides a number of facilities, such as mixing of
  21 audio streams, and data format and sample rate conversion.
  22 .SS "Overview"
  23 .sp
  24 .LP
  25 The audio framework provides a software mixing engine (audio mixer) for all
  26 audio devices, allowing more than one process to play or record audio at the
  27 same time.
  28 .SS "Multi-Stream Codecs"
  29 .sp
  30 .LP
  31 The audio mixer supports multi-stream Codecs. These devices have DSP engines
  32 that provide  sample rate conversion, hardware mixing, and other features. The
  33 use of such hardware features is opaque to applications.
  34 .SS "Backward Compatibility"
  35 .sp
  36 .LP
  37 It is not possible to disable the mixing function. Applications must not assume
  38 that they have exclusive access to the audio device.
  39 .SS "Audio Formats"
  40 .sp
  41 .LP
  42 Digital audio data represents a quantized approximation of an analog audio
  43 signal waveform. In the simplest case, these quantized numbers represent the
  44 amplitude of the input waveform at particular sampling intervals. To achieve
  45 the best approximation of an input signal, the highest possible sampling
  46 frequency and precision should be used. However, increased accuracy comes at a
  47 cost of increased data storage requirements. For instance, one minute of
  48 monaural audio recorded in u-Law format (pronounced \fBmew-law\fR) at 8 KHz
  49 requires nearly 0.5 megabytes of storage, while the standard Compact Disc audio
  50 format (stereo 16-bit linear PCM data sampled at 44.1 KHz) requires
  51 approximately 10 megabytes per minute.
  52 .sp
  53 .LP
  54 An audio data format is characterized in the audio driver by four parameters:
  55 sample Rate, encoding, precision, and channels. Refer to the device-specific
  56 manual pages for a list of the audio formats that each device supports. In
  57 addition to the formats that the audio device supports directly, other formats
  58 provide higher data compression. Applications can convert audio data to and
  59 from these formats when playing or recording.
  60 .SS "Sample Rate"
  61 .sp
  62 .LP
  63 Sample rate is a number that represents the sampling frequency (in samples per
  64 second) of the audio data.
  65 .sp
  66 .LP
  67 The audio mixer always configures the hardware for the highest possible sample
  68 rate for both play and record. This ensures that none of the audio streams
  69 require compute-intensive low pass filtering. The result is that high sample
  70 rate audio streams are not degraded by filtering.
  71 .sp
  72 .LP
  73 Sample rate conversion can be a compute-intensive operation, dependingon the
  74 number of channels and a device's sample rate. For example, an 8KHz signal can
  75 be easily converted to 48KHz, requiring a low cost up sampling by 6. However,
  76 converting from 44.1KHz to 48KHz is computer intensive because it must be up
  77 sampled by 160 and then down sampled by 147. This is only done using integer
  78 multipliers.
  79 .sp
  80 .LP
  81 Applications can greatly reduce the impact of sample rate conversion by
  82 carefully picking the sample rate. Applications should always use the highest
  83 sample rate the device supports. An application can also do its own sample rate
  84 conversion (to take advantage of floating point and accelerated instructions)
  85 or use small integers for up and down sampling.
  86 .sp
  87 .LP
  88 All modern audio devices run at 48 kHz or a multiple thereof, hence just using
  89 48 kHz can be a reasonable compromise if the application is not prepared to
  90 select higher sample rates.
  91 .SS "Encodings"
  92 .sp
  93 .LP
  94 An encoding parameter specifies the audiodata representation. u-Law encoding
  95 corresponds to CCITT G.711, and is the standard for voice data used by
  96 telephone companies in the United States, Canada, and Japan. A-Law encoding is
  97 also part of CCITT G.711 and is the standard encoding for telephony elsewhere
  98 in the world. A-Law and u-Law audio data are sampled at a rate of 8000 samples
  99 per second with 12-bit precision, with the data compressed to 8-bit samples.
 100 The resulting audio data quality is equivalent to that of stan dard analog
 101 telephone service.
 102 .sp
 103 .LP
 104 Linear Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) is an uncompressed, signed audio format in
 105 which sample values are directly proportional to audio signal voltages. Each
 106 sample is a 2's complement number that represents a positive or negative
 107 amplitude.
 108 .SS "Precision"
 109 .sp
 110 .LP
 111 Precision indicates the number of bits used to store each audio sample. For
 112 instance, u-Law and A-Law data are stored with 8-bit precision. PCM data can be
 113 stored at various precisions, though 16-bit is the most common.
 114 .SS "Channels"
 115 .sp
 116 .LP
 117 Multiple channels of audio can be interleaved at sample boundaries. A sample
 118 frame consists of a single sample from each active channel. For example, a
 119 sample frame of stereo 16-bit PCM data consists of 2 16-bit samples,
 120 corresponding to the left and right channel data. The audio mixer sets the
 121 hardware to the maximum number of channels supported. If a mono signal is
 122 played or recorded, it is mixed on the first two (usually the left and right)
 123 channel only. Silence is mixed on the remaining channels.
 124 .SS "Supported Formats"
 125 .sp
 126 .LP
 127 The audio mixer supports the following audio formats:
 128 .sp
 129 .in +2
 130 .nf
 131 Encoding            Precision  Channels
 132 Signed Linear PCM   32-bit     Mono or Stereo
 133 Signed Linear PCM   16-bit     Mono or Stereo
 134 Signed Linear PCM   8-bit      Mono or Stereo
 135 u-Law               8-bit      Mono or Stereo
 136 A-Law               8-bit      Mono or Stereo
 137 .fi
 138 .in -2
 139 .sp
 140 
 141 .sp
 142 .LP
 143 The audio mixer converts all audio streams to 24-bit Linear PCM before mixing.
 144 After mixing, conversion is made to the best possible Codec format. The
 145 conversion process is not compute intensive and audio applications can choose
 146 the encoding format that best meets their needs.
 147 .sp
 148 .LP
 149 The mixer discards the low order 8 bits of 32-bit Signed Linear PCM in order to
 150 perform mixing. (This is done to allow for possible overflows to fit into
 151 32-bits when mixing multiple streams together.) Hence, the maximum effective
 152 precision is 24-bits.
 153 .SH FILES
 154 .sp
 155 .ne 2
 156 .na
 157 \fB\fB/kernel/drv/audio\fR\fR
 158 .ad
 159 .RS 29n
 160 32-bit kernel driver module
 161 .RE
 162 
 163 .sp
 164 .ne 2
 165 .na
 166 \fB\fB/kernel/drv/amd64/audio\fR\fR
 167 .ad
 168 .RS 29n
 169 64-bit x86 kernel driver module
 170 .RE
 171 
 172 .sp
 173 .ne 2
 174 .na
 175 \fB\fB/kernel/drv/sparcv9/audio\fR\fR
 176 .ad
 177 .RS 29n
 178 64-bit SPARC kernel driver module
 179 .RE
 180 
 181 .sp
 182 .ne 2
 183 .na
 184 \fB\fB/kernel/drv/audio.conf\fR\fR
 185 .ad
 186 .RS 29n
 187 \fBaudio\fR configuration file
 188 .RE
 189 
 190 .SH ATTRIBUTES
 191 .sp
 192 .LP
 193 See \fBattributes\fR(5) for a description of the following attributes:
 194 .sp
 195 
 196 .sp
 197 .TS
 198 box;
 199 l | l
 200 l | l .
 201 ATTRIBUTE TYPE  ATTRIBUTE VALUE
 202 _
 203 Architecture    SPARC, x86
 204 _
 205 Interface Stability     Uncommitted
 206 .TE
 207 
 208 .SH SEE ALSO
 209 .sp
 210 .LP
 211 \fBioctl\fR(2), \fBattributes\fR(5), \fBaudio\fR(7I), \fBdsp\fR(7I)