Overview

The Nintendo 64 Audio Library is a lightweight library of functions. It provides game developers with the ability to interactively synthesize and manipulate audio on the Nintendo 64. It provides support for both sampled sound playback and Wavetable synthesis. This is accomplished with four software objects: the Sound Player, the Sequence Player, the Synthesis Driver, and the Audio Synthesis Microcode. These are shown in the figure below, “Audio Software Architecture."

Note: Both the Sequence Player and the Sound Player are clients of the Synthesis Driver. The Driver can support an arbitrary number of clients, including multiple Sound and Sequence Players.

This chapter contains descriptions of the Sound Player, Sequence Player, and Synthesis Driver APIs . Many application programmers will be satisfied with the interfaces provided by the Sound and Sequence Players. Most of the Synthesis Driver API is intended for programmers who want to create their own players (see the Section 17.5, “Writing Your Own Player” for more information); however, all programmers should understand certain functions essential for the creation of audio Command Lists.

Audio Software Architecture

The following sections outline the data structures and API calls that are necessary to make use of the audio library. The data structure definitions and function prototypes for the calls described are in the include file libaudio.h, which is part of the software release. Also included as a part of the software release are reference (man) pages for each of the function calls.

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Nintendo of America Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Last Updated January, 1999