Sun u-law
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The u-Law compression standard (pronounced "mu-law") is an international standard for compressing audio--typically 16-bit and 8-bit speech--with a ratio of 2:1. It is often used in telephony applications, and it was one of the early formats adopted by the Internet for sound. Sun's .au audio format--as well as other formats--can make use of u-Law compression at arbitrary sampling rates, but 8kHz sample rate is common. |
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Sun u-law
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| Each µ-law sample is stored in 8 bits, but the meaning of the sample is different. Other sound formats use linear encoding, whereas µ-law is logarithmic. This means that the spacing between the different sound levels grows progressively larger as the values increase. This format provides a larger dynamic range than normal 8-bit samples, approximately equivalent to 12-bit samples. However, it suffers from more noise than linear encodings. . This .au soundfile uses u-law compression, and is set up so that when you click on it, it will either open in a new window and play, or it will be downloaded to your computer and played using a helper app. The method of playback depends on how you have configured your applications in the "Preferences" window of your browser. |
Play a 30-second mono 8kHz u-Law music example (244kb) using the ".au" format.
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