AHI (AHI audio system) is a retargetable audio subsystem for

AmigaOS AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions ...

, MorphOS and AROS. It was created by Martin Blom in the mid-1990s to allow standardized

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

support for

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...

hardware other than just the native Amiga sound chip, for example

16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...

s. AHI offers improved functionality not available through the AmigaOS audio

device driver In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabli ...

, such as seamless audio playback from a user selected audio device (in applications which supported AHI), standardized functionality for audio recording and efficient software mixing routines for combining multiple sound channels thus overcoming the four channel hardware limit of the original Amiga chipset. It also incorporated a unique mode that produced 14-bit playback using the Amiga chipset by combining two 8-bit channels set at different volumes. The first official release of AHI was in 1996. AHI became a widely supported standard for audio hardware and audio software on

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

systems and was officially included in later operating system releases. The author has stated that when referring to this software the correct term is 'AHI audio system' or just 'AHI' and not 'Audio Hardware Interface', term sometimes used by the press.

References

External links

AHI web site
AmigaOS Amiga Amiga APIs Audio libraries MorphOS {{music-software-stub