mhorne@ka7axd.WV.TEK.COM (Michael T. Horne) (06/07/89)
I have several questions about Voice Mail and other related topics:
1) Does the NeXT system have a native file format for audio streams? I know
very little about the audio sampling capabilities in the NeXT (hence these
questions:), so assuming one can easily sample a stream of audio from the mic
and save it in a file, what format do they save it in? Is any compression done
on the data, or is it just straight binary?
2) Is there a Voice Mail interface on NeXT, or do you have to uuencode an
audio stream, then mail it to its destination? If so, do they have a specific
Voice Mail file format?
3) Are there any other systems that support Voice Mail? I'm trying to find out
if there are any standards for Voice Mail files, and whether or not NeXT uses
one.
Please E-mail to me if possible, as I can't always read this group.
Thanks!
Mike
(503) 685-6061 (W), 641-6061 (H) (phone-net)
mhorne%ka7axd.wv.tek.com@relay.cs.net (arpa)
{backbone sites}!tektronix!orca!ka7axd!mhorne (uucp)ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer) (06/10/89)
In article <3523@orca.WV.TEK.COM> mhorne%ka7axd.wv.tek.com@relay.cs.net writes: >1) Does the NeXT system have a native file format for audio streams? I know >very little about the audio sampling capabilities in the NeXT (hence these >questions:), so assuming one can easily sample a stream of audio from the mic >and save it in a file, what format do they save it in? Is any compression >done on the data, or is it just straight binary? Voice Mail data is stored in mu-law encoded format, which allows 12-bit dynamic range in 8-bits. The data is sampled at 8012.8 Hz, and, currently at least, is not compressed. The data files also have a header section which is actually a "SNDSoundStruct," described in page 10-9 of the 0.9 Technical Documentation. (This structure is also available online, in /usr/include/sound/soundstruct.h. The Sound chapter in the online version of Tech Docs isn't fully updated for 0.9, and contains an older SNDSoundStruct. There is a warning about this in the chapter.) To get at the raw-data stored in sampled sound files, the best move would be to use sound library, or, better yet, SoundKit functions. Functions and methods are provided for recording, playing, editing, displaying, and converting sampled sounds. You can also obtain a pointer to the raw data (with an indication of how it is stored) and use or abuse it as you wish. Ali Ozer, NeXT Developer Support aozer@NeXT.com
carlson@aftac.tis.llnl.gov (John Carlson) (06/15/89)
A useful hint. You can copy "name.vox" files to "name.snd". Then the sound player will play the file instead of the mailer. If you already knew this, send the flames to yourself. John Carlson