Java Examples in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Playing Sounds with javax.sound

To achieve more detailed control over the playback of sounds, including the ability to skip to any specified spot in the sound and control things such as volume and balance, we must use the Java Sound API, which is a much lower-level API than the AudioClip interface. JavaSound consists of the javax.sound.sampled package for sampled audio and the javax.sound.midi package for MIDI-based audio. Example 17-3 demonstrates the basic capabilities of these two packages. It loads a sound file (sampled audio or MIDI) completely into memory and then displays a GUI that allows you to play it. The GUI makes extensive use of the Swing JSlider component, which allows you both to select the playback position of the sound and to set things such as the volume, balance, and tempo of the sound. The program displays different controls for sampled audio files than it does for MIDI files. Both GUIs are shown in Figure 17-1. You’ll notice that the code is substantially different for sampled audio and MIDI files as well.

Figure 17-1. SoundPlayer playing sampled audio and MIDI files

A shortcoming of the SoundPlayer class is that it can only play sampled audio files that use PCM encoding. ALAW and ULAW encoded files are not supported, nor are more complex compressed encodings, such as MP3. The JavaSound API attempts to directly mirror the capabilities of sound hardware, and ...