Road Map to QuickTime 3

New Sound Manager Features

This chapter discusses new features of the Sound Manager that are available since the release of Sound Manager 3.0, including Sound Manager releases 3.1, 3.2.1, and 3.3.

This chapter expands on the release notes that accompanied the Sound Manager 3.3 software. For example, Sound Manager 3.3 now supports scheduling of sounds, both in the past and in the future. In addition, Sound Manager sources are now multi-platform; the same manager, with the same API and features, is available for Mac OS, Windows 95 and Windows NT.

In Sound Manager 3.3, the contents of both SoundInput.h and SoundComponents.h interface files have been merged into a single Sound.h file.

Read this chapter if you want to use the Sound Manager to

• determine the currently installed version
• convert between sound formats using the SoundConverterOpen function
• use the sound conversion architecture to convert a buffer of silence to IMA 4:1, changing the sampling rate in the process.

These are described in the section "Using the Sound Manager" .

Other sections explain the new sound commands, sound informational selectors and Sound Manager routines added since the release of Sound Manager 3.0.

• New Features of Sound Manager 3.3
  This section describes the new features of Sound Manager 3.3, including the ability to schedule sounds, new sound commands, multi-platform support, new sound formats, and a new set of constants that supplement and replace some old constants.
• General
• The Ability to Schedule Sounds
• New Sound Commands
• Multi-platform Support
• The Issue of "Endianness"
• Sound Formats
• A New Sound Codec Included: a-Law Compression
• New Sample Sizes Supported: 24 and 32 Bit Integer
• New Codecs to Import & Export Samples
• New Functions Added to the SoundConverter Suite
• New Sound Info Selectors Created
• API Changes


• Features of Sound Manager 3.1 and 3.2.1
  This section describes features added to Sound Manager 3.1 and 3.2.1 that are included in Sound Manager 3.3.
• Pre-mixer Effects
• Native PowerPC Code
• Three New Audio Codecs Added
• Playing Alert Sounds Asynchronously


• Using the Sound Manager
  This section gives code examples showing how to use the new features of the Sound Manager from within an application.
• Determining the Sound Manager Version
• Converting Between Sound Formats
• The Process of Converting a Sound
• An Example of Converting a Buffer of Silence to IMA 4:1
• Scheduling Two Sounds with the Sound Clock
• Converting to 32-bit Little Endian Data
• A List of Audio Atoms
• Using the SoundLib Shared library (PowerPC Only)


• Sound Commands
  This section describes the new sound commands have been added since the release of Sound Manager 3.0. You can use these sound commands with the SndDoImmediate and SndDoCommand functions.
• clockComponentCmd
• getClockComponentCmd
• scheduledSoundCmd
• linkSoundComponentsCmd
• rateMultiplierCmd


• Sound Informational Selectors
  This section describes the sound informational selectors added since the release of Sound Manager 3.0. These selectors are used to obtain information and control the sound environment using the GetSoundOutputInfo, SetSoundOutputInfo, SndGetInfo, SndSetInfo, SPBGetDeviceInfo, or SPBSetDeviceInfo routines.
• siHardwareBusy
• siHardwareFormat
• siHardwareMute
• siHardwareVolume
• siPreMixerSoundComponent
• siSetupCDAudio


• Sound Manager Routines
  This section describes the functions added to the Sound Manager since release 3.0.
• SndGetInfo and SndSetInfo
• ParseAIFFHeader
• ParseSndHeader
• GetCompressionInfo
• Example Extended Common Chunk
• Example Compressed Sound Header
• GetCompressionName
• SoundConverterGetBufferSizes
• SoundConverterBeginConversion
• SoundConverterConvertBuffer
• SoundConverterEndConversion