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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 <[email protected]> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Plays the audio file name.ext or the audio data stored in the vector x.