Audio Hardware Interface

TITLE

AHI - Audio Hardware Interface

VERSION

Beta release 1

AUTHOR

Martin Blom <lcs@lysator.liu.se>

DESCRIPTION

Device-independent audio, first try.

This is a beta release of the AHI audio system.  The intention of this
release is to gather opinions about the design and attract programmers
using the system and/or contribute with sound card drivers.

Quick overview:
     
* Driver based

Each supported sound card is controlled by a library-based audio driver.
For a 'dumb' sound card, a new driver should be written in a few hours.
For a 'smart' sound card, it is possible to utilize an on-board DSP, for
example, to maximize performance and sound quality.  Avalable today are
working but unfinished drivers for Paula (8/14/14c bit) Wavetools

* Fast, powerful mixing routines (yeah, right... haha)

The library's mixing routines mix 8- or 16-bit signed samples located in
Fast-RAM and outputs 16-bit mono or stereo (with stereo panning if desired)
data, using any number of channels (as long as 'any' means less than
128...).  Tables can be used speed the mixing up (especially when using
8-bit samples).  The samples can have any length (including odd) and can
have any number of loops.

* Support for non-realtime mixing

By providing a timing feature, it is possible to create high- quality
output even if the processing power is lacking, by saving the output to
disk, for example as an IFF AIFF or 8SXV file.  A driver for sample
rendering is not available yet, but it is being worked on.

* Audio database

Uses ID codes, much like Screenmode IDs, to select the many parameters that
can be set.  The functions to access the audio database are not too
different from those in 'graphics.library'.  The library also features a
requester to get an ID code from the user.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

AmigaOS release 2.

68020 processor or higher.

AVAILABILITY

Aminet, for example:
ftp://ftp.luth.se/pub/aminet/dev/misc/ahi.lha

WWW:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~lcs/ahi.html

PRICE

Free.

DISTRIBUTABILITY

Copyright ©1994-1996 Martin Blom.
Freely distributable in unmodified form.

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