Aviation Industry CBT Committee

DIGITAL AUDIO
AICC PLATFORM SUBCOMMITTEE
SCOPE This document recommends guidelines that promote the interoperability of digital audio. Interoperability means the ability of courseware with audio to playback on different personal computers with different audio cards in them. It also means the ability of a single PC to playback courses with audio from different vendors.

RECOMMENDATIONS: For the end user of all MS-DOS courseware with digital audio, the AICC recommends: _ Playback (run-time) system that uses AICC-compatible audio files for delivery of audio within the courseware. If this is not possible, as a minimum, the courseware playback system should be able to import AICC audio files, convert them to a native format, and play them that way. _ Recommended digital encoding formats for the AICC audio files are _ _ PCM 8 Khz sample rate and 8 bit sample size. ADPCM 8 Khz sample rate and 4 bit sample size.

For the end user of all MS Windows courseware with digital audio, the AICC recommends: _ Playback (run-time) system that uses Microsoft WAV audio files for delivery of audio within the courseware. If this is not possible, as a minimum the courseware should be able to playback the digital audio with MPC II (Multimedia PC specification) compliant hardware.

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Recommended digital encoding formats for the WAV audio files are _ _ Linear PCM 11 Khz sample rate and 8 bit sample size. TrueSpeech DSP Group TrueSpeech 8.5 software codec.

AICC-compatibility of courseware, authoring tools, and hardware can be verified by the AICC-sponsored Independent Testing Laboratory. TECHNICAL DETAILS AICC-compatible refers to digitized audio that conforms to: DOS ITU encoding standards AICC file format guidelines AICC driver guidelines AICC audio control commands Windows Windows 95 encoding standards WAV file format Windows 95 driver guidelines

_ _ _ _

Or

_ _ _

Encoding Standard -- DOS The two encoding methods for DOS supported by the AICC are both defined by international standards from the ITU1. Currently, the AICC recommends the use of ADPCM (ITU Group 721) for the delivery of courseware to the student. This is digitized audio with an 8 KHz sample rate and 4 bit samples. The quality is "voice grade" or "telephone quality." The advantage of this encoding is that fairly large amounts of audio can be stored in a relatively small disk space. The alternative recommended encoding method is Law PCM (ITU Group 711) with an 8 KHz sample frequency and an 8 bit sample size. The quality is little better than ADPCM, but this encoding method is easier to convert to other encoding schemes and easier to edit than ADPCM. Because Law PCM requires twice the disk storage space, it may limit the courseware that can be played back on a single CD ROM or hard disk. The AICC recommends the support of this standard only when requested by a customer.

ITU: International Telecommunications Union A standards setting organization. A United Nations agency whose voting members are countries, i.e. each country has only one vote which is cast by a designated representative. Most countries select ITU representatives from their Postal, Telephone and Telegraph Administration (PTT). The United States, lacking such a body, is represented by the U.S. ITU National Committee, a Department of State body. Formerly this organization was known as the CCITT International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee.

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Encoding Standard -- Windows The two encoding methods for Windows supported by the AICC are both defined by Microsoft. Currently, the AICC recommends the use of Linear PCM for the delivery of courseware to the student. This is digitized audio with an 11 KHz sample rate and 8 bit samples. The quality is "voice grade" or "telephone quality." The advantage of this encoding is that playback is simple, requiring little computing power, editing is straight forward, music can be recorded with tolerable fidelity, and it is the most widely used format for Windows audio. Its disadvantage is the relatively large file size required for voice grade audio. The alternative recommended encoding method is TrueSpeech 8.5. This system compresses the audio to a file size about 1/10 that of the 11KHz PCM file. The quality of voice playback is comparable to the 11KHz linear PCM. The disadvantages of this encoding method are poor quality for music, and the computing power required to decompress the audio an 80386 is required and a 486 or faster recommended. The AICC recommends the support of this standard whenever fairly large amounts of audio need to be stored in a relatively small disk space or transmitted over a network.

Complete descriptions of documents that define each of these standards and guidelines can be found in the next selection, entitled REFERENCE DOCUMENTS.

REFERENCE DOCUMENTS The AICC DOS audio guidelines are not described in a single document. Recommended Practices for Digital Audio Portability AICC document AUD 002 This is the main definition of the standard. To implement the AICC Digital Audio Guidelines and Recommendations for DOS, five items are required: A definition of the standard file format in which the audio should be stored, The standard set of commands which must be supported, The parameters associated with each command, The binary tokens for the commands, and Error messages to be used when commands are not supportable.

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Recommended Practices for Multimedia Portability release 1.1. The Interactive Multimedia Association Techworld Plaza, Suite 440 800 K Street NW Washington, DC 20001 Phone: (202) 408-1000 In this Interactive Multimedia Association (IMA) document is the description of: Some basic system commands, General principles for the implementation of this standard, and Basic error messages associated with some file accesses.

Plug & Play Guidelines for AICC CBT Drivers AICC document AUD 001-A This document describes how the AICC audio standard may be implemented with other vendor components in a training system.

Plug and Play Memory Resident Program This is on disk. It is the basic set of services into which the memory resident AICC audio driver should "plug." This program may be obtained from the AICC.

www.dspg.com This web site contains information on the TrueSpeech encoding, its use in Windows and on the Web and in video conferencing.

Audio and the Migration to Windows AICC document MPD 006 This document outlines a draft recommendation for accommodating DOS-based ADPCM audio used in AICC Legacy courseware under Windows audio. It presents a strawman strategy for eventually moving to Windows audio.