## 32 Audio Processing

Octave provides a few functions for dealing with audio data. An audio `sample' is a single output value from an A/D converter, i.e., a small integer number (usually 8 or 16 bits), and audio data is just a series of such samples. It can be characterized by three parameters: the sampling rate (measured in samples per second or Hz, e.g. 8000 or 44100), the number of bits per sample (e.g. 8 or 16), and the number of channels (1 for mono, 2 for stereo, etc.).

There are many different formats for representing such data. Currently, only the two most popular, linear encoding and mu-law encoding, are supported by Octave. There is an excellent FAQ on audio formats by Guido van Rossum <guido@cwi.nl> which can be found at any FAQ ftp site, in particular in the directory `/pub/usenet/news.answers/audio-fmts` of the archive site `rtfm.mit.edu`.

Octave simply treats audio data as vectors of samples (non-mono data are not supported yet). It is assumed that audio files using linear encoding have one of the extensions `lin` or `raw`, and that files holding data in mu-law encoding end in `au`, `mu`, or `snd`.

— Function File: lin2mu (x, n)

> Converts audio data from linear to mu-law. Mu-law values use 8-bit unsigned integers. Linear values use n-bit signed integers or floating point values in the range -1<=x<=1 if n is 0. If n is not specified it defaults to 0, 8 or 16 depending on the range values in x.

— Function File: mu2lin (x, bps)

> Converts audio data from linear to mu-law. Mu-law values are 8-bit unsigned integers. Linear values use n-bit signed integers or floating point values in the range -1<=y<=1 if n is 0. If n is not specified it defaults to 8.

— Function File: loadaudio (name, ext, bps)

> Loads audio data from the file `name.ext` into the vector x.

> The extension ext determines how the data in the audio file is interpreted; the extensions `lin` (default) and `raw` correspond to linear, the extensions `au`, `mu`, or `snd` to mu-law encoding.

> The argument bps can be either 8 (default) or 16, and specifies the number of bits per sample used in the audio file.

— Function File: saveaudio (name, x, ext, bps)

> Saves a vector x of audio data to the file `name.ext`. The optional parameters ext and bps determine the encoding and the number of bits per sample used in the audio file (see `loadaudio`); defaults are `lin` and 8, respectively.

The following functions for audio I/O require special A/D hardware and operating system support. It is assumed that audio data in linear encoding can be played and recorded by reading from and writing to `/dev/dsp`, and that similarly `/dev/audio` is used for mu-law encoding. These file names are system-dependent. Improvements so that these functions will work without modification on a wide variety of hardware are welcome.

— Function File: playaudio (name, ext)
— Function File: playaudio (x)

> Plays the audio file `name.ext` or the audio data stored in the vector x.

— Function File: record (sec, sampling_rate)

> Records sec seconds of audio input into the vector x. The default value for sampling_rate is 8000 samples per second, or 8kHz. The program waits until the user types <RET> and then immediately starts to record.

— Function File: setaudio ([w_type [, value]])

> Execute the shell command ``mixer [w_type [, value]]`'