Introduction -> Sound is perhaps the most important element of multimedia.

It is meaningful
“speech” in any language, from a whisper to a scream. It can provide the listening pleasure of music, the
startling accent of special effects or the ambience of a moodsetting background. Sound is the
terminology used in the analog form, and the digitized form of sound is called as audio.
Power of Sound  When something vibrates in the air is moving back and forth it creates wave of
pressure. These waves spread like ripples from pebble tossed into a still pool and when it reaches the
eardrums, the change of pressure or vibration is experienced as sound. Acoustics is the branch of
physics that studies sound. Sound pressure levels are measured in decibels (db); a decibel measurement
is actually the ratio between a chosen reference point on a logarithmic scale and the level that is actually
experienced.
Multimedia Sound Systems  The multimedia application user can use sound right off the bat on
both theMacintosh and on a multimedia PC running Windows because beeps and warning sounds are
available as soon as the operating system is installed. On the Macintosh you can choose one of the
several sounds for the system alert. In Windows system sounds are WAV files and they reside in the
windows\Media subdirectory. There are still more choices of audio if Microsoft Office is installed.
Windows makes use of WAV files as the default file format for audio and Macintosh systems use SND as
default file format for audio.
Digital Audio Digital audio is created when a sound wave is converted into numbers – a process
referred to as digitizing. It is possible to digitize sound from a microphone, a synthesizer, existing tape
recordings, live radio and television broadcasts, and popular CDs. You can digitize sounds from a natural
source or prerecorded. Digitized sound is sampled sound. Ever nth fraction of a second, a sample of
sound is taken and stored as digital information in bits and bytes. The quality of this digital recording
depends upon how often the samples are taken.

Preparing Digital Audio Files  Preparing digital audio files is fairly straight forward. If you have analog
source materials – music or sound effects that you have recorded on analog media such as cassette
tapes.
The first step is to digitize the analog material and recording it onto a computer readable digital media.
It is necessary to focus on two crucial aspects of preparing digital audio files:
o Balancing the need for sound quality against your available RAM and Hard disk resources.
o Setting proper recording levels to get a good, clean recording.
Remember that the sampling rate determines the frequency at which samples will
be drawn for the recording. Sampling at higher rates more accurately captures the high
frequency content of your sound. Audio resolution determines the accuracy with which a
sound can be digitized.
Formula for determining the size of the digital audio
Monophonic = Sampling rate * duration of recording in seconds * (bit resolution / 8) * 1
Stereo = Sampling rate * duration of recording in seconds * (bit resolution / 8) * 2
The sampling rate is how often the samples are taken.
The sample size is the amount of information stored. This is called as bit resolution.
The number of channels is 2 for stereo and 1 for monophonic.
The time span of the recording is measured in seconds. Once a recording has been made, it will almost
certainly need to be edited.
The basic sound editing operations that most multimedia procedures needed are described in the
paragraphs that follow
1. Multiple Tasks: Able to edit and combine multiple tracks and then merge the tracks and export them
in a final mix to a single audio file.
2. Trimming: Removing dead air or blank space from the front of a recording and an unnecessary extra
time off the end is your first sound editing task.
3. Splicing and Assembly: Using the same tools mentioned for trimming, you will probably want to
remove the extraneous noises that inevitably creep into recording.
4. Volume Adjustments: If you are trying to assemble ten different recordings into a single track there is
a little chance that all the segments have the same volume.
5. Format Conversion: In some cases your digital audio editing software might read a format different
from that read by your presentation or authoring program.
6. Resampling or downsampling: If you have recorded and edited your sounds at 16 bit sampling rates
but are using lower rates you must resample or downsample the file.
7. Equalization: Some programs offer digital equalization capabilities that allow you to modify a
recording frequency content so that it sounds brighter or darker.
8. Digital Signal Processing: Some programs allow you to process the signal with reverberation, multitap
delay, and other special effects using DSP routines.
9. Reversing Sounds: Another simple manipulation is to reverse all or a portion of a digital audio
recording. Sounds can produce a surreal, other wordly effect when played backward.
10. Time Stretching: Advanced programs let you alter the length of a sound file without changing its
pitch. This feature can be very useful but watch out: mosttime stretching algorithms will severely
degrade the audio quality.

Making MIDI Audio

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a communication standard developed for electronic
musical instruments and computers. MIDI files allow music and sound synthesizers from different
manufacturers to communicate with each other by sending messages along cables connected to the
devices.
Creating your own original score can be one of the most creative and rewarding aspects of building a
multimedia project, and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is the quickest, easiest and most
flexible tool for this task. The process of creating MIDI music is quite different from digitizing existing
audio. To make MIDI scores, however you will need sequencer software and a sound synthesizer. The
MIDI keyboard is also useful to simply the creation of musical scores. An advantage of structured data
such as MIDI is the ease with which the music director can edit the data. A MIDI file format is used in the
following circumstances :
Digital audio will not work due to memory constraints and more processing power requirements
When there is high quality of MIDI source
When there is no requirement for dialogue.
A digital audio file format is preferred in the following circumstances:
When there is no control over the playback hardware
When the computing resources and the bandwidth requirements are high.
When dialogue is required.
Audio File Formats
A file format determines the application that is to be used for opening a file.
Following is the list of different file formats and the software that can be used for
opening a specific file.
1. *.AIF, *.SDII in Macintosh Systems
2. *.SND for Macintosh Systems
3. *.WAV for Windows Systems
4. MIDI files – used by north Macintosh and Windows
5. *.WMA –windows media player
6. *.MP3 – MP3 audio
7. *.RA – Real Player
8. *.VOC – VOC Sound
9. AIFF sound format for Macintosh sound files
10. *.OGG – Ogg Vorbis

Software used for Audio

Software such as Toast and CD-Creator from Adaptec can translate the digital files of red book Audio
format on consumer compact discs directly into a digital sound editing file, or decompress MP3 files into
CD-Audio. There are several tools available for recording audio. Following is the list of different software
that can be used for recording and editing audio ;

Soundrecorder fromMicrosoft
Apple’s QuickTime Player pro
Sonic Foundry’s SoundForge for Windows
Soundedit16
Let us sum up

Following points have been discussed in this lesson:

Audio is an important component of multimedia which can be used to provide liveliness to a multimedia
presentation.
The red book standard recommends audio recorded at a sample size of 16 bits and sampling rate of 44.1
KHz.
MIDI is Musical Instrument Digital Interface.
MIDI is a communication standard developed for electronic musical instruments and computers.
To make MIDI scores, however you will need sequencer software and a sound synthesizer
Sound record codecs are used to keep virtual audio statistics. Here are a number of the main sound file
codecs:

WAV: This is an uncompressed audio format developed by Microsoft and IBM. WAV documents include
raw, lossless PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) audio statistics—high audio incredible but huge record sizes.
MP3: MP3 is the most famous compressed audio layout. uses lossy” compression, doing away with
inaudible sounds to reduce the file duration significantly while maintaining brilliant audio Widely
supported.
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) It also losslessly compresses audio records without dropping the first-
rate; however, the documents are larger than MP3s. Used wherein better pleasantness is preferred.
WMA (Windows Media Audio) Compressed audio layout was advanced via Microsoft as an alternative to
MP3. Contains DRM duplicate protection capabilities.
AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) A standardized and improved version of MP3 Used through Apple’s
iTunes shop. Can produce more wonderful than MP3 at comparable bit expenses.
AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) An uncompressed audio layout is superior to the useful resources
of Apple. Contains first-rate audio.
Ogg Vorbis is a free, open-source compressed audio format. Alternative to MP3 and AAC.
MIDI: Stores virtual sheet music facts in preference to audio waveforms. Used for virtual music and
computer-generated songs.