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Windows Legacy Audio Components
This article describes audio APIs and components in Microsoft Windows which are now obsolete or deprecated. Multimedia Extensions (MME) The MME API or the Windows Multimedia API (also known as ''WinMM'') was the first universal and standardized Windows audio API. Wave sound events played in Windows (up to Windows XP) and MIDI I/O use MME. The devices listed in the ''Multimedia/Sounds and Audio'' control panel applet represent the MME API of the sound card driver. The Multimedia Extensions ( interfaces) were released in autumn 1991 to support sound cards, as well as CD-ROM drives, which were then becoming increasingly available. The Multimedia Extensions were released to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), mainly CD-ROM drive and sound card manufacturers, and added basic multimedia support for audio input and output and a CD audio player application to Windows 3.0. The Multimedia Extensions' new features were not available in Windows 3.0 real mode, only in standard and 386 e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for servers, and Windows IoT for embedded systems. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone. The first version of Windows was released on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Windows is the most popular desktop operating system in the world, with 75% market share , according to StatCounter. However, Windows is not the most used operating system when including both mobile and desktop OSes, due to Android's massive growth. , the most recent version of Windows is Windows 11 for consumer PCs and tablets, Windows 11 Enterprise for corporations, and Windows Server 2022 for servers. Genealogy By marketing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Video For Windows
Video for Windows was a suite of video playing and editing software introduced by Microsoft in 1992. A runtime version for viewing videos only was made available as a free add-on to Windows 3.1, which then became an integral component of Windows 95. Video for Windows was mostly replaced by the July 1996 release of ActiveMovie, later known as DirectShow. Apple filed a lawsuit in 1994 alleging theft of several thousand lines of QuickTime source code to improve the software. The case was settled in 1997, when Apple agreed to make Internet Explorer the default browser over Netscape, and in exchange, Microsoft agreed to continue developing Microsoft Office and other software for Mac OS for the next 5 years, and purchase $150 million of non-voting Apple stock. Overview Video for Windows was first introduced in November 1992. It was developed as a reaction to Apple Computer's QuickTime technology, which added digital video to the Macintosh platform. Costing around $200, the product includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hardware Mixing
Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calculated in software running on a generic CPU can also be calculated in custom-made hardware, or in some mix of both. To perform computing tasks more quickly (or better in some other way), generally one can invest time and money in improving the software, improving the hardware, or both. There are various approaches with advantages and disadvantages in terms of decreased latency, increased throughput and reduced energy consumption. Typical advantages of focusing on software may include more rapid development, lower non-recurring engineering costs, heightened portability, and ease of updating features or patching bugs, at the cost of overhead to compute general operations. Advantages of focusing on hardware may include speedup, reduced power ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latency (audio)
Latency refers to a short period of delay (usually measured in milliseconds) between when an audio signal enters a system and when it emerges. Potential contributors to latency in an audio system include analog-to-digital conversion, buffering, digital signal processing, transmission time, digital-to-analog conversion and the speed of sound in the transmission medium. Latency can be a critical performance metric in professional audio including sound reinforcement systems, foldback systems (especially those using in-ear monitors) live radio and television. Excessive audio latency has the potential to degrade call quality in telecommunications applications. Low latency audio in computers is important for interactivity. Telephone calls In all systems, latency can be said to consist of three elements: codec delay, playout delay and network delay. Latency in telephone calls is sometimes referred to as delay; the telecommunications industry also uses the term ''quality of experie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulse-code Modulation
Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications. In a PCM stream, the amplitude of the analog signal is sampled regularly at uniform intervals, and each sample is quantized to the nearest value within a range of digital steps. Linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) is a specific type of PCM in which the quantization levels are linearly uniform. This is in contrast to PCM encodings in which quantization levels vary as a function of amplitude (as with the A-law algorithm or the μ-law algorithm). Though ''PCM'' is a more general term, it is often used to describe data encoded as LPCM. A PCM stream has two basic properties that determine the stream's fidelity to the original analog signal: the sampling rate, which is the number of times per second that samples are taken; and the bit depth, which determines the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to manufacturing on May 15, 1998, and generally to retail on June 25, 1998. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid 16-bit and 32-bit monolithic product with the boot stage based on MS-DOS. Windows 98 is a web-integrated operating system that bears numerous similarities to its predecessor. Most of its improvements were cosmetic or designed to improve the user experience, but there were also a handful of features introduced to enhance system functionality and capabilities, including improved USB support and accessibility, as well as support for hardware advancements such as DVD players. Windows 98 was the first edition of Windows to adopt the Windows Driver Model, and introduced features that would become standard in future generations of Wind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windows Driver Model
In computing, the Windows Driver Model (WDM) also known at one point as the Win32 Driver Model is a framework for device drivers that was introduced with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 to replace VxD, which was used on older versions of Windows such as Windows 95 and Windows 3.1, as well as the Windows NT Driver Model. Overview WDM drivers are layered in a stack and communicate with each other via I/O request packets (IRPs). The Microsoft Windows Driver Model unified driver models for the Windows 9x and Windows NT product lines by standardizing requirements and reducing the amount of code that needed to be written. WDM drivers will not run on operating systems earlier than Windows 98 or Windows 2000, such as Windows 95 (before the OSR2 update that sideloads the WDM model), Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 3.1. By conforming to WDM, drivers can be binary compatible and source-compatible across Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DirectX Plugin
In computer music and professional audio creation, a DirectX plugin is a software processing component that can be loaded as a plugin into ''host applications'' to allow real-time processing, audio effects, mixing audio or act as virtual synthesizers. DirectX plugins allow the replacement of traditional recording studio hardware and rack units used in professional studios with software-based counterparts that can be connected together in a modular way. This allows host manufacturers to focus on the conviviality and efficiency of their products while specialized manufacturers can focus on the digital signal processing aspect. For example, there are plugins for effects boxes, such as reverbs and delays, effects pedals, like guitar distortion, flange and chorus, and for mixing and mastering processors such as compressors, limiters, exciters, sub bass enhancers, stereo imagers and many more. Overview Similar to Virtual Studio Technology and later, Audio Units in Apple Mac OS X, D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DirectMusic
DirectMusic is a deprecated component of the Microsoft DirectX API that allows music and sound effects to be composed and played and provides flexible interactive control over the way they are played. Architecturally, DirectMusic is a high-level set of objects, built on top of DirectSound, that allow the programmer to play sound and music without needing to get quite as low-level as DirectSound. DirectSound allows for the capture and playback of digital sound samples, whereas DirectMusic works with message-based musical data. Music can be synthesized either in hardware, in the Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth, or in a custom synthesizer. History DirectMusic was first released by Microsoft in 1996 as an ActiveX control called Interactive Music Architecture (IMA). It was introduced as part of the 6.1 version of the DirectX library in February 1999 and is included in all Microsoft Windows operating systems starting with Windows 98 Second Edition. DirectMusic has since been depreca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DirectSound
DirectSound is a deprecated software component of the Microsoft DirectX library for the Windows operating system, superseded by XAudio2. It provides a low-latency interface to sound card drivers written for Windows 95 through Windows XP and can handle the mixing and recording of multiple audio streams. DirectSound was originally written for Microsoft by John Miles. Besides providing the essential service of passing audio data to the sound card, DirectSound provides other essential capabilities such as recording and mixing sound, adding effects to sound (e.g., reverb, echo, or flange), using hardware accelerated buffers in Windows 95 through XP, and positioning sounds in 3D space. DirectSound also provides a means to capture sounds from a microphone or other input and controlling capture effects during audio capture. After many years of development, today DirectSound is a mature API, and supplies many other useful capabilities, such as the ability to play multichannel sounds at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FLAC
FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software package that includes a codec implementation. Digital audio compressed by FLAC's algorithm can typically be reduced to between 50 and 70 percent of its original size and decompresses to an identical copy of the original audio data. FLAC is an open format with royalty-free licensing and a reference implementation which is free software. FLAC has support for metadata tagging, album cover art, and fast seeking. History Development was started in 2000 by Josh Coalson. The bit-stream format was frozen when FLAC entered beta stage with the release of version 0.5 of the reference implementation on 15 January 2001. Version 1.0 was released on 20 July 2001. On 29 January 2003, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the FLAC project announced the incorporat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ogg Vorbis
Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjunction with the Ogg container format and it is therefore often referred to as Ogg Vorbis. Vorbis is a continuation of audio compression development started in 1993 by Chris Montgomery. Intensive development began following a September 1998 letter from the Fraunhofer Society announcing plans to charge licensing fees for the MP3 audio format. The Vorbis project started as part of the Xiphophorus company's Ogg project (also known as OggSquish multimedia project). Chris Montgomery began work on the project and was assisted by a growing number of other developers. They continued refining the source code until the Vorbis file format was frozen for 1.0 in May 2000. Originally licensed as LGPL, in 2001 the Vorbis license was changed to the BSD li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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