Android 4.0 NDK Updated: Developers Get Moving On New Streaming Audio APIs
We’ve seen the Galaxy Nexus up close and personal, and it’s design and functionality are quite a diversion from what we’ve seen in Gingerbread and to a lesser extent Honeycomb. It’s great that the OS itself has improved, but giving developers greater access to equally improve their own apps is the second half of the battle. Google made that step on Friday, updating the Android 4.0 NDK to Version 7 which provides access to two new APIs associated with improving streaming audio-performance within apps:
Low-level streaming multimedia: A new API based on Khronos OpenMAX AL 1.0.1 provides a direct, efficient path for low-level streaming multimedia. The new path is ideal for applications that need to maintain complete control over media data before passing it to the platform for presentation. For example, media applications can now retrieve data from any source, apply proprietary encryption/decryption, and then send the data to the platform for display.
Audio decoding into PCM: Extensions to the existing native audio API based on Khronos OpenSL ES let native apps decode compressed audio assets to PCM format.
Any developers out there want to tell us how or if they plan on incorporating these new APIs into their apps?