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Introduction

Contents:

Organization of This Document
See Also

Core Audio is a set of services that developers use to implement audio and music features in Mac OS X applications. Its services handle all aspects of audio, from recording, editing, and playback, compression and decompression, to MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) processing, signal processing, and audio synthesis. You can use it to write standalone applications or modular plug-ins that work with existing products.

Core Audio is available to all versions of Mac OS X, although older versions may not contain particular features. This document describes Core Audio features available as of Mac OS X v10.4.

This document is for all developers interested in creating audio software in Mac OS X. You should have basic knowledge of audio, digital audio, and MIDI terminology, as well as some familiarity with Mac OS X.

Organization of This Document

This document is organized into the following chapters:

• “What is Core Audio?” describes basic features of Core Audio and their relation to other audio and recording technologies.

• “Core Audio Programming Interfaces” describes the various programming interfaces available in Core Audio.

• “An Overview of Common Tasks” describes at a high level how you might use Core Audio to accomplish common audio-related tasks.

• “Core Audio Frameworks” lists the various frameworks and headers that define Core Audio.

• “System-Supplied Audio Units” lists the audio units that ship with Mac OS X v10.4, along with their Component Manager types and subtypes.

• “Supported Audio File and Data Formats” describes the audio file and data formats that Core Audio supports by default.

See Also

For more information about audio and Core Audio on Mac OS X, see the following resources:

• Audio Unit Programming Guide, which contains detailed information about creating audio units.

• Apple Core Audio Format Specification 1.0, which describes Apple’s Core Audio File (CAF) format.

• The Core Audio mailing list: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/coreaudio-api

• The Mac OS X audio developer site: http://developer.apple.com/audio/

• The Core Audio SDK, available at http://developer.apple.com/sdk/

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