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Input ItemsOver the last three years, in answering developer questions about the Sound Manager, DTS has gained some new insights into the Sound Manager's inner workings. In this section of the Technote, we share those insights. On the surface, sound input appears to be programmatically similar to sound output. This, however, is not true. There are two reasons for this:
One Source of Input Problems: Different Hardware ImplementationsInput problems can arise because of variations in sound input hardware from one machine to another. For example, a Macintosh Quadra 700 has 8-bit sound input while a Power Macintosh 7200 has 16-bit sound input. The contrast, however, is more subtle because a 7200 defaults to recording stereo 16-bit sound instead of 8-bit mono sound like the 700. Furthermore, even though the Quadra 840AV and most Power Macs support 16-bit sound, the 840AV supports many more and different sample rates than most Power Macs.
Simultaneous Play-and-RecordSimultaneous play-and-record is the act of recording one sound while playing another sound at the same time. This is a feature commonly requested in speaker phones. Not all Macintosh computers can simultaneously play and record sound -- e.g., a PowerBook Duo 280c cannot play and record at the same time, while the Quadra 840AV can. To determine if a particular Mac can play and record simultaneously, you need
to call Gestalt with the 'snd ' selector and check for the
Variations on Input Sample Rate SupportDon't assume that all Macs support the same input rates, and don't assume that they default to the same rates either. Even similar Macs can have very different capabilities. There are variations in the input sample rates supported by different Macintosh computers. For example, the number of input rates supported by a Power Macintosh 7100 is two, while the number of input rates for a Power Macintosh 7500 is three, and a Quadra 840AV has seven. The Power Macintosh 7100 rates are 22.050 KHz and 44.1 KHz; the Power Mac 7500 also supports 11.025KHz; the Quadra 840AV rates includes those, plus an additional two -- 24 KHz and 48 KHz. For most developers, and users, this is not an issue unless you have hard-coded
in a particular sample rate. If this is the case, then you should rewrite your
code to be more flexible in its choice of sample rates. Use Having the Correct Buffer Size MattersSound recording works best if the buffer you are recording into is sized to be an integer multiple of the size of the recording device's interrupt buffer. After you've set up the recording parameters, specifically mono versus stereo,
and 8 bit versus 16 bits, call After determining the size, multiply this number by some integer of your choosing to size your application's recording buffer. This way, at interrupt time you are copying whole buffers, and you and the Sound Manager don't have to worry about partial buffers. This helps to optimize how the Sound Manager moves data out of the recording hardware and is a speed optimization. Variations in Sound Input HardwareThe sound input hardware on all Power Macintosh 5200/5300/6200/6300 computers
was changed during its lifetime. Some of these Macs can only record 8-bit
sounds, while others can also record 16-bit sounds. The machine you have in
your lab will be one or the other of these; you need to make sure that you
write code that will work on both. To this end, use
On PCI Power Macintoshes, using the If you need to record from only one channel of an input source on a stereo
Macintosh and Portable IssuesThe PowerBook 5300 does not support microphone level input as most other Macs do. That 1/8" jack in the back that looks suspiciously like a microphone jack isn't - it's a line input jack. The PowerBook 5300 requires line-level input to record sounds from this jack, such as the input levels that are carried on RCA type jacks. Some Macintoshes shipped with an RCA-to-microphone level adapter, but this won't work on the PowerBook 5300. You'll need to buy a RCA-to-mini 1/8" jack to get sound into a PowerBook 5300 if you don't want to use the built in microphone. Recording must be done from a source that outputs line level signals, such as a standard CD player. The PowerBook Duo 2300's sound hardware is capable of recording stereo sound, but since its built-in microphone only records in mono, and the 2300 doesn't have a line-in jack, you have to connect it to an external Duo Dock to get line-in input. The current Apple Duo Docks that provide sound input jacks only provide mono input connectors. Unless a third party makes a dock with a stereo sound input jack, there just isn't a way to get from hear (pun intended) to there. Output ItemsSound Managers version 3.0 and later extend the capabilities of the output of sound, offering 16-bit sound and better sample rates along with more a flexible component architecture. Return the Right ThingIf you are calling These are currently the only calls that should return a NumVersion. Trouble with Void PointersThe Because the last parameter of these calls is a void*, it looks as if you need to pass a pointer to the value you are setting, but this is not the case if what you are passing is 4 bytes or less in size. If you are passing a parameter that is larger than four bytes, you must pass a pointer to it. If you are calling GetSoundOutputInfo, SndGetInfo, or Playing a Compressed Sound Using
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Some applications may be calling some Sound Manager calls more often than they
need to, specifically, GetDefaultOutputVolume
. Some applications call this
function in their main event loop when this is probably not necessary. Sound
volume levels rarely change ten or more times a second -- in fact, they rarely
change. The proper time to call GetDefaultOutputVolume
is right before you go
to play a sound to see if you need to adjust the output device's volume, or to
adjust the input or output gain of a device. This saves you a little time in
your event loop and may make your application a bit faster.
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In the SndDoubleBufferHeader
2 structure, there is a field called dbhSampleSize
which is the sample size in bits of the sound.
Inside Macintosh: Sound
page 2-111 says that dbhSampleSize
should be set to 0 if the sound is
compressed. This is incorrect: dbhSampleSize
should always be set to the actual
uncompressed sample size of the sound.
Inside Macintosh: Sound page 2-112
says that the dbhPacketSize field needs to be set to the number of bits per
packet; it needs to be set to the number of bytes per packet, however.
This only applies to those developers who are writing sound output components. It is expected that all sound components work in real time.
Beginning with Sound Manager 3.1 the kRealTime flag was renamed to kNonRealTime. This flag tells the Sound Manager that your sound component can also work in non-real time, i.e., it can do a better job if only given the extra time.
This means that when the component is part of a QuickTime output chain or a Sound Manager 3.2 conversion chain, it can take the extra time it needs to do a better job.
Because we expect sound to occur in realtime, smoothly and without hiccups or gaps, if you turn on Virtual Memory (VM), you're going to experience problems. When VM pages it turns off interrupts for a long period of time and without interrupts enabled, the Sound Manager is not able to service the sound hardware. If interrupts are disabled for too long, the sound will stop playing and then resume when VM re-enables interrupts.
You want to make sure that VM at least never pages out your sound's buffers.
Even if it doesn't page out your buffers, this will not assure you that sound
will play uninterrupted, but it is the best that you can do. To this end, use
HoldMemory
to hold the memory that your sound's buffers are in. HoldMemory
is
explained in the chapter "Virtual Memory" in Inside Macintosh: Memory.
Macintosh Technical Note ME 09 has valuable
information about how to deal with
VM and the limitations it imposes.
Be sure you call UnHoldMemory
on each block when you are done with it.
Setting the noCacheBit
(which is defined in FSM.h) to disable caching of reads
when you're reading a sound from disk is a good idea. Since many sounds are
larger than will fit into the cache, and most sounds are only played once,
caching them is of no benefit and not worth the overhead. Refer to Macintosh
Technical Note FL 16 for information on how to use this feature.
Because there are real hardware differences among various Macintosh computers,
you may not be taking full advantage of sound in your application. To avoid
sound input and output problems, your app needs (1) to call Gestalt and
SPBGetDeviceInfo
to determine what features and capabilities are present in
both the hardware and the Sound Manager, and (2) to pay attention to the topics
and issues addressed in this Technote.
The Sound Manager 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 Release Notes on Developer CD Series.
Macintosh Technote ME 9 - Coping With VM and Memory Mappings
Macintosh Technote FL 16 - File Manager Performance and Caching
Acrobat version of this Note (68K). |
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