Preface

Who this Guide Is For

This guide is intended for three groups of readers:

• Application developers: software programmers who want to write programs in the Java^TM language (whether applications or applets) that use audio or MIDI. Most readers will be in this category.
• Service providers: developers of software modules that extend the capabilities of an implementation of the Java Sound application programming interface (API). For example, a vendor might provide a new audio mixer or MIDI synthesizer, or the ability to read and write a new file format. The Java Sound API is designed to let programs automatically get access to all such "plug-in" modules that are available on a particular system.
• API implementors: developers creating a new implementation of the Java Sound API.

What this Guide Describes

This is a largely conceptual description of the Java Sound API, with some code snippets as programming examples. The Java Sound API specifies a software layer that allows application programs to communicate with an audio and MIDI engine. The Java Sound API is part of the Java^TM 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE), version 1.3, which is the version that this guide describes. The sound API is included in both the Java 2 Software Development Kit (SDK), Standard Edition and the Java 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition. Earlier implementations of the Java Sound API were supplied as a separate product, and their programming interface differs from the one described here.

Note: This guide is not a description of any particular implementation of the Java Sound API! In particular, it does not specifically describe the reference implementation of the Java Sound API created by Sun Microsystems, Inc. For example, you will not find here a list of exactly which sound file formats are supported in the reference implementation. (Because the Java Sound API makes "plug-in" services possible, the implementor or third parties can add support for new formats and so on.) More generally, this programmer's guide ignores any unique features, extensions, limitations, or bugs of a particular implementation. For details about a specific implementation, please see the documentation for the vendor and version of interest.

For More Information

See the links to the Java Sound API reference documentation at http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.3/docs/guide/sound/. This Web site also includes a brief description of the reference implementation, as well as links to other resources about the Java Sound API, such as demo programs, mailing lists, and Frequently Answered Questions (FAQs).