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Windows Vista Audio Architecture
Windows Vista (formerly codenamed Windows "Longhorn") has many significant new features compared with previous Microsoft Windows versions, covering most aspects of the operating system. In addition to the new user interface, security capabilities, and developer technologies, several major components of the core operating system were redesigned, most notably the audio, print, display, and networking subsystems; while the results of this work will be visible to software developers, end-users will only see what appear to be evolutionary changes in the user interface. As part of the redesign of the networking architecture, IPv6 has been incorporated into the operating system, and a number of performance improvements have been introduced, such as TCP window scaling. Prior versions of Windows typically needed third-party wireless networking software to work properly; this is no longer the case with Windows Vista, as it includes comprehensive wireless networking support. For graphics, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft Windows. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on November 8, 2006, and over the following two months, it was released in stages to business customers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and retail channels. On January 30, 2007, it was released internationally and was made available for purchase and download from the Windows Marketplace; it is the first release of Windows to be made available through a digital distribution platform. Development of Windows Vista began in 2001 under the codename "Longhorn"; originally envisioned as a minor successor to Windows XP, it feature creep, gradually included numerous new features from the then-next major release of Windows codenamed "Blackc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital, originally synonymous with Dolby AC-3 (see below), is the name for a family of audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. Called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1995, it is lossy compression (except for Dolby TrueHD). The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35 mm film prints. It has since also been used for TV broadcast, radio broadcast via satellite, digital video streaming, DVDs, Blu-ray discs and game consoles. Dolby AC-3 was the original version of the Dolby Digital codec. The basis of the Dolby AC-3 multi-channel audio coding standard is the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT), a lossy audio compression algorithm. It is a modification of the discrete cosine transform (DCT) algorithm, which was proposed by Nasir Ahmed in 1972 for image compression. The DCT was adapted into the MDCT by J.P. Princen, A.W. Johnson and Alan B. Bradley at the University of Surrey in 1987. Dolby Laboratories adap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AC'97
AC'97 (''Audio Codec '97;'' also MC'97 for ''Modem Codec '97'') is an audio codec standard developed by Intel Architecture Labs and various codec manufacturers in 1997. The standard was used in motherboards, modems, and sound cards. The specification covers two types of components, and the AC-Link digital interface between them: # an AC'97 ''digital controller'' (DC97), which is typically built into the southbridge of the chipset, and # an AC'97 audio and/or modem ''codec'', available from several vendors, which contains the analog components of the architecture. AC'97 defines a high-quality, 16- or 24- bit audio architecture with 5.1 surround sound support for the PC. AC'97 supports a 96 kHz sampling rate at 24-bit stereo resolution and a 48 kHz sampling rate at 24-bit stereo resolution for multichannel recording and playback. Integrated audio is implemented with the AC'97 Codec on the motherboard, a communications and networking riser card, or an audio/modem r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intel High Definition Audio
Intel High Definition Audio (IHDA) (also called HD Audio or development codename Azalia) is a specification for the audio sub-system of personal computers. It was released by Intel in 2004 as the successor to their AC'97 PC audio standard, but it is not backwards-compatible with it. Features The Intel High Definition Audio specification includes the following features: * Up to 15 input and 15 output streams * Up to 16 PCM audio channels per stream * Sample resolutions of 8–32 bits * Sample rates of 6–192 kHz * Support for audio codecs (e.g., ADC, DAC), modem codecs, and vendor-offered codecs * Discoverable codec architecture * Fine-grained codec power-control * Audio jack detection, sensing, and retasking * Vendor-offered (OEM or IHV) audio enhancement features Motherboards typically do not have any more than eight built-in output channels (7.1 surround sound) and four input channels (back and front panel microphone inputs, and a back-panel stereo line-in). Users ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Class Driver
{{no footnotes, date=May 2015 In computing, a class driver is a type of hardware device driver that can operate a large number of different devices of a broadly similar type. Class drivers are very often used with USB based devices, which share the essential USB protocol in common, and devices with similar functionality can easily adopt common protocols. Instead of having a separate driver for every kind of CD-ROM device, a class driver can operate a wide variety of CD-ROMs from different manufacturers. To accomplish this the manufacturers make their products compatible with a standardized protocol. In technical terms, a class driver is used as a base or ancestor class for specific drivers which need to have slightly different or extended functionality, but which can take advantage of the majority of the functionality provided by the class driver. This concept is a key aspect of object oriented programming, which when extended to drivers makes it much easier for hardware vendors to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The early 1980s and home computers, rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and the company has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, video gaming and other fields. Microsoft is the List of the largest software companies, largest software maker, one of the Trillion-dollar company, most valuable public U.S. companies, and one of the List of most valuable brands, most valuable brands globally. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. During the 41 years from 1980 to 2021 Microsoft released 9 versions of MS-DOS with a median frequen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
OpenAL
OpenAL (Open Audio Library) is a cross-platform audio application programming interface (API). It is designed for efficient rendering of multichannel three-dimensional positional audio. Its API style and conventions deliberately resemble those of OpenGL. OpenAL is an environmental 3D audio library, which can add realism to a game by simulating attenuation (degradation of sound over distance), the Doppler effect (change in frequency as a result of motion), and material densities. OpenAL aimed to originally be an open standard and open-source replacement for proprietary (and generally incompatible with one another) 3D audio APIs such as DirectSound and Core Audio, though in practice has largely been implemented on various platforms as a wrapper around said proprietary APIs or as a proprietary and vendor-specific fork. While the reference implementation later became proprietary and unmaintained, there are open source implementations such as OpenAL Soft available. History OpenA ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Audio Stream Input/Output
Audio Stream Input/Output (ASIO) is a computer audio interface driver protocol for digital audio specified by Steinberg, providing high data throughput, synchronization, and low latency between a software application and a computer's audio interface or sound card. ASIO was initially released in 1997 in order to enable streaming of one or more audio streams from an (multi-input/output) audio interface to a software and vice versa with minimal latency and sample accurate synchronization of the audio streams. It allows the audio streams to use any sample rate and supports bit resolutions of 16, 24, 32 bit integer and 32 or 64 bit floating point. The release of ASIO 2.0 in 1999 brought further enhancements such as ASIO Direct Monitoring, where an audio signal is monitored directly from the audio interface with basically zero latency, and ASIO Positioning Protocol, used to sample accurately synchronize a computer to other digital machines such as ADAT recorder or also othe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmental Audio Extensions
The Environmental Audio Extensions (or EAX) are a number of digital signal processing presets for audio, present in Creative Technology Sound Blaster sound cards starting with the Sound Blaster Live and the Creative NOMAD/Creative ZEN product lines. Due to the release of Windows Vista in 2007, which deprecated the DirectSound3D API that EAX was based on, Creative discouraged EAX implementation in favour of its OpenAL-based EFX equivalent – though at that point relatively few games used the API. Technology EAX is a library of extensions to Microsoft's DirectSound3D, itself an extension to DirectSound introduced with DirectX 3 in 1996 with the intention to standardize 3D audio for Microsoft Windows, adding environmental audio presets to DS3D's audio positioning. Ergo, the aim of EAX has nothing to do with 3D audio positioning, this is usually done by a sound library like DirectSound3D or OpenAL. Rather, EAX can be seen as a library of sound effects written and compiled to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MultiMedia Extensions
Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched on May 22, 1990. It introduces a new graphical user interface (GUI) that represents applications as clickable icons, instead of the list of file names in its predecessors. Later updates expand capabilities, such as multimedia support for sound recording and playback, and support for CD-ROMs. Windows 3.0 was the first version of Windows to perform well both critically and commercially, and was considered a major improvement over its previous Windows 2.0 offering. Its GUI was considered a challenger to those used and popularized by the Macintosh. Other praised features are the improved multitasking, customizability, and especially the utilitarian memory management that troubled the users of Windows 3.0's predecessors. The software was a major success, achieving 10 million sales. However, Microsoft was criticized by third-party developers for bundling its separate software with the operating environment, whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
KMixer
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 manufacturer, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), mainly CD-ROM drive and sound card manufacturers, and added basic multimedia support for audio input and output and a Compact disc, CD audio player application to Windows 3.0. The Multimedia Extensions' new features were not available in Wind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
