What is Java Sound?The Java Sound API specifies mechanisms for capturing, processing, and playing back audio and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) data in a framework that promotes extensibility and flexibility. Sun's reference implementation for the Java Sound API, also known as the Java Sound engine, is a 64 channel audio rendering and MIDI controlled sound synthesis engine which offers reliable, high quality sound on all Java 2 Platforms. This implementation also supports a set of high-quality General MIDI sound banks. Who needs Java Sound?Anyone who is interested in adding sound capabilities into their Java applets and applications will benefit from the Java Sound API. Java Sound will enable a wide variety of markets, such as education, advertising and telecommunications, to take advantage of its high quality audio to make communication more effective and accessible. Where is Java Sound available?The full featured Java Sound API is available as a core API in the Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition, v. 1.3 and above. The full featured Java Sound API is also available as part of the Java Media Framework 2.x for use on older JDK 1.x platforms. Please note that the Java 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition, v. 1.3 release for Win32 does not include a soundbank. To use the software synthesizer with this release bundle, you must manually install a soundbank. For more information, refer to the Soundbanks page. This API provides comprehensive access to the features of the Java Sound engine, and allows musicians and sound designers to integrate their work into Java applets and applications. The Java Sound engine has been integrated into previous releases of the Java 2 platform (formerly known as JDK 1.2), and uses the existing AudioClip interface to access it. This means AudioClips may be created from any of the supported file formats using any of the supported data types. What are the benefits of Java Sound?Consistent and Reliable Sound: Java Sound allows consistent, reliable, high-quality audio on all Java-enabled platforms. Developers have the assurance their audio content will sound great across all platforms, with the only requirement being a simple digital to audio converter (DAC). CPU Efficient: Java Sound uses only a small amount of a system's CPU to process sound files. For example: a 24-voice MIDI file uses only 20% of the CPU on a Pentium 90 MHz system. Complete Audio API: The fully featured Java Sound API allows total access to the underlying synthesis and rendering engine. This provides musicians with the capability to create new musical instruments and engineers the ability to capture microphone data for telephony or audio conferencing applications. What audio formats does Java Sound support?Java Sound supports the following audio file formats: AIFF, AU and WAV. It also supports the following MIDI based song file formats: SMF type 0 (Standard MIDI File, aka .mid files), SMF type 1 and RMF. The Java Sound engine can render 8 or 16 bit audio data, in mono or stereo, with sample rates from 8KHz to 48KHz, that might be found in streaming audio or any of the supported file formats. How do you stream audio using Java Sound?Java Sound can begin playing as soon as it starts getting audio samples or MIDI requests -- there is no need to wait for the entire audio file to be loaded into memory. Java Sound can be used in conjunction with the Java Media Framework API software (JMF) to stream audio data over the network. Third parties can also use Java Sound to present audio within their own streaming framework. What other APIs that Sun is creating that relate to Java Sound?Java Sound is part of a family of APIs that work together to provide customers with enhanced multimedia capabilities. These APIs include: Java 2D - two dimensional graphics and imaging Java 3D - three dimensional graphics and imaging Java Advanced Imaging - additional graphics and imaging operations which extend Java 2D Java Media Framework - allows the capture, streaming and playback of time-based media such as audio and video. Java Shared Data Toolkit - provides collaboration support for Java applets and applications. Java Speech - speech synthesis and recognition (API only) FreeTTS free speech synthesizer in Java - speech synthesis (implementation only) |