• Allows all Java technology enabled platforms to play consistent, reliable, high-quality audio
• Enables professional musicians and content providers to create compelling, customized music and sound experiences for users of multimedia and Internet applications
• Minimizes the impact of audio-rich web pages on computing resources
• Eliminates the need for high-cost sound cards by providing a software-only solution that requires only a digital-to-analog converter (DAC)
• Supports a wide range of audio formats

"Write Once, Run Anywhere ^TM"

The Java Sound API provides developers with a full-featured set of application programming interfaces that can be used to enhance Java applications with high-quality music and sound. By exploiting the inherent strengths of the Java Platform, the Java Sound API delivers the advantage of the "Write Once, Run Anywhere" promise to a broad spectrum of applications.

With Java Sound API, web-page designers, content providers, and composers can create rich, reliable audio content once, and deploy it across any Java platform.

The Java Sound API is part of the Java Media API suite, enabling the Java Sound API to easily be used in conjunction with other Java Media APIs such as the Java 2D, Java Media Framework (JMF), and Java 3D APIs. For example, the JMF media player uses the Java Sound API for audio rendering.

This integration provides additional opportunities for developers to enhance the audio experience and heighten the user's "audio-awareness."

Enhancing the User Experience with Sound

The Java Sound API will enable the creation of applications with a wide-range of sound capabilities for users in all fields, from education to corporate business environments.

Content providers can use sound to more effectively communicate with their customers and provide more compelling websites. The incorporation of music and sound will help immerse the user in the content and create a more dynamic, exciting experience.

For example, a travel agency with a vacation planning website could add audio effects to simulate sounds from a particular geographic location, providing customers with higher-quality information and enhancing the planning process. A brokerage house providing online stock trading services might attach sound to various events surrounding specified stocks or financial indexes to alert users of moves in the market, providing a more effective and dynamic approach to portfolio tracking.

Java Sound API has direct access to the underlying synthesis and rendering engine and its ability to produce high-quality audio output from sound files makes it easy to enhance web pages with audio content. Java Sound API support of most common audio file formats enables the audio engine to intelligently respond to user actions within a web site, providing a more interactive, personalized experience for the user. For example, musical events can be linked to the opening of a web page, the movement of the mouse, or the receipt of an email or error message.

Consistent, High-Quality, Customized Music and Sound Without Limits

The Java Sound API provides the ideal platform for composers and multimedia content providers who are searching for a quantum leap forward in predictable audio quality across all Java platforms. It features high-quality, 16-bit, 32-channel sound that you would normally expect from a high-end wavetable sound card. The Java Sound API allows the composer to specify exactly how an instrument will sound, what instruments will be used and how they will be mixed, ensuring the delivery of consistent, reliable sound regardless of the deployment platform.

The flexibility of the Java Sound API is limited only by the composer's imagination. Composers can go beyond the prescribed set of General MIDI-based instrument and synthesizer effects and add entirely new instruments or replace existing ones. Composers can also leverage the high-quality General MIDI sound bank that ships with the Java Sound API, build their own sound banks, or drop in third-party sound files.

CPU-efficient Audio

With the Java Sound API, there's no need to worry about the impact of audio-rich web pages on computing resources--Java Sound API minimizes the use of a system's CPU to process sound files.

Support for Standard Audio Formats

The Java Sound API supports the following audio file formats:

• AIFF
• AU, Sun/NeXT
• WAV
• RMF ^TM
• MIDI Type 0 and Type 1

For More Information

For more information on the Java Sound API and how it can enhance your Java platform applications and applets with consistent, high-quality sound, see:

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