Programmer's Guide to Sound, A

"I just wish this book had been available years ago."
-Bobby Prince, composer and sound designer for computer games including Doom and Duke Nukem 3D

"This is the kind of book that will stand as one of the defining works in the specialization of audio programming."
-Gene Turnbow, senior programmer and game designer for Sound Source Interactive, Inc.

"I'm amazed at the breadth and depth of Tim's coverage."
-George Wright
Information Systems, Loyola College, Maryland

A Programmer's Guide To Sound provides detailed technical information about audio storage, processing, and compression, and includes tested C++ source code. Developers who want to add sound technology to their applications will find all the details they need to:

• access low-level sound services on Win32, Mac OS, and UNIX
• decompress MPEG, IMA ADPCM, and µ-Law data
• read from WAVE, VOC, AIFF, and AU file formats
• play MIDI and MOD music files.

This book also includes accessible introductions to related topics, such as instrument synthesis, musical tuning, human sound perception, digital filtering, and Fourier Transforms.

Developers will especially appreciate the emphasis placed on practical details. For every topic, the author provides complete source code to demonstrate the principles involved. The source code from the book compiles into a sample program that reads and plays a wide variety of different sound files on Win32, Mac OS, and UNIX. The CD-ROM includes all 40,000 lines of source code from the book, in addition to project files for popular compilers, sample sound files, and contributed software and related information.

Whether you are an audio professional who wants to learn more about programming or a computer programmer who wants to know more about implementing audio, this comprehensive resource will be an invaluable reference for years to come.

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Introduction

Some years ago, I found myself researching a variety of different file formats. For graphics formats such as GIF, I had no trouble finding good, detailed descriptions of the overall format and the bit-by-bit details of the underlying compression. However, I was hard pressed to find comparable information for even the most popular audio formats. Although basic formats are outlined in several places, solid information about the compression methods used is surprisingly hard to find.

I'm clearly not the only person to have encountered this problem. I've seen many audio tools that boast of support for a vast number of file formats but lack support for any compression methods at all.

In the intervening years, I have managed to piece together much of the necessary information and wrote this book to bring it together in a single place. This book documents a variety of common audio file formats and audio compression standards and also discusses many related issues that arise in programming audio on a variety of systems.

As a programmer, I'm often frustrated when otherwise excellent books stop just short of giving me the details I need. For that reason, when I write about programming, I include detailed, tested source code. Even if the text description omits some critical detail, you can always look at the source code, which must somehow address that issue. By organizing the book around the source code, I hope to ensure that every detail you need is here.

In many cases, you may be able to use my source code directly in your software project. I encourage you to do so. But please pay attention to the conditions listed at the top of each source file. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me through the publisher. Even if you don't have questions, I'd like to hear about how you used my code and what your experiences were. If there's enough interest and the publisher is willing, I may update this book to better fit your needs.

The software in this book was tested by automatically extracting the source code from the electronic files for the book. The book was produced using noweb, LaTeX2e and dvips typesetting software running on FreeBSD 2.1. The source code was tested under FreeBSD 2.1 with the GNU GCC compiler suite, Windows 95 using Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0, and Mac OS 7.6 using Metrowerks CodeWarrior Gold 11. NuMega's BoundsChecker and ParaSoft's CodeWizard were also used to test the source. The text fonts are Adobe Garamond and Computer Modern Typewriter; headings are in Adobe Helvetica and Monotype Arial. Artwork is from the Digitart Musicville collection from Image Club Graphics.

Many people have generously contributed to the production of this book: Mary Treseler and the staff at Addison-Wesley patiently endured my seemingly endless revisions and last-minute changes. George Wright, John Miles, Bobby Prince, Gene Turnbow, Tom White, and several others provided thoughtful, honest criticism of my early drafts, which immeasurably improved the end product. Jon Erickson and the staff at Dr. Dobb's supported my efforts. Above all, Beth provided invaluable help in organizing, editing, indexing, and endless other tasks.

As always, any errors that remain are my own.

Table of Contents

Introduction.


Source Code.


About This Book.


Acknowledgements.

I. BASICS.

II. SYSTEM SPECIFICS.

III. COMPRESSION.

IV. GENERAL FILE FORMATS.

V. MUSIC FILE FORMATS.

VI. AUDIO PROCESSING.

II. APPENDICES.