Inside Macintosh: Sound
This chapter describes the Sound Manager, the part of the Macintosh system software that controls the production and manipulation of sounds on Macintosh computers. You can use the Sound Manager to create a wide variety of sounds and to manipulate sounds in many ways. The Sound Manager is also used by other parts of the Macintosh system software that produce sounds, such as the Speech Manager and QuickTime.
Most QuickTime developers do not need to be familiar with the Sound Manager API. This chapter is of interest to programmers who want to use the Sound Manager API directly.
Windows programmers should use only the Sound Manager functions that are included in the Windows DLL.
To use this chapter, you should already be familiar with the information in the chapter "Introduction to Sound on the Macintosh" earlier in this book, especially with the portions of that chapter that describe the Macintosh sound architecture and the routines related to sound output. That chapter shows how your application can play a sound resource or a sound file synchronously (that is, with other processing suspended while the sound plays).
You should read this chapter if you need a greater degree of control over sound output than the routines described in that introductory chapter provide. For example, if you want to play sounds asynchronously or to exercise very fine control over the process of sound production, this chapter contains information you need.
This chapter begins by describing the capabilities of the Sound Manager and the role of sound commands and sound channels in producing sound. Then it explains how you can use the Sound Manager to
You're not likely to use all of these capabilities in a single application. In general, you should read the section "About the Sound Manager" and then turn to the parts of the section "Using the Sound Manager" that describe the features you want to use in your application. The section "Sound Storage Formats" explains in detail the format of sound resources and sound files. You can find a complete reference to the Sound Manager data structures and routines in the section "Sound Manager Reference" .
This chapter describes the capabilities and programming interfaces of version 3.0 of the Sound Manager. See the chapter "Introduction to Sound on the Macintosh" for some information on how version 3.0 differs from earlier versions. The capabilities and performance of version 3.0 are significantly better than those of all previous Sound Manager versions, even though their programming interfaces are largely identical. This chapter occasionally warns you about techniques or routines that cannot be used in versions prior to 3.0, but it does not provide an exhaustive comparison of all available versions.
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