Au File Format Article Index for
Au
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Information About

Au File Format




  Extension au<br />snd
  Mime audio/basic
  Magic snd
  Owner Sun Microsystems
  Type Audio Container
  Container For Audio , most often µ-law


The Au file format is a simple Audio File Format that consists of a header of six 32-bit words, an optional information chunk and then the data (in Big Endian format). The format was introduced by Sun Microsystems and was also used on NeXT systems.

Although the format supports many Audio Encoding formats, it's often associated with the µ-law logarithmic encoding, which dates back at least to the SPARCstation 1 as the native method used by the SunOS /dev/audio interface which was widely used as a De Facto standard for Unix sound.

The type of encoding depends on the value of the 'encoding' field (word 3 of the header). Formats 2–7 are uncompressed and A-law , respectively, both lossy. Several of the others are DSP commands or data, designed to be processed by the NeXT MusicKit software.


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