Newton Developer Technical Information: Newton Programmer's Guide: 2.1 OS Addendum /

Chapter 7 - Sound / About Sound

Terminology

channel

A virtual connection to specific piece of sound hardware.

codec

Compressor-decompressor.

sample

A binary object consisting of sound samples (supplied by an analog to digital converter). The 1.x and 2.0 Newton devices use the same sample format as Macintosh (8 bit unsigned). Newton devices with the 2.1 OS can also use 16-bit linear (signed) samples.

volume

A value used to specify the loudness for a sound. The 1.x interface supports integer volumes 0 through 4, (0 = quiet; 4 = maximum volume). The 2.0 interface supports real volumes in the volume slot of a sound frame, which correspond to dB (decibel) levels. A large negative value corresponds to silence, and 0.0 corresponds to full volume. The Newton 2.1 OS interfaces add a decibel-based system volume.