Beatnik Audio Engine
Beatnik Audio Engine (BAE), previously known as SoundMusicSys and later Headspace Audio Engine, is a software synthesizer developed by Beatnik. Its soundbanks are stored in the proprietary Headspace Sound Bank (.hsb) format. It supports various formats, including Rich Music Format (.rmf, Beatnik's proprietary MIDI-based format with support for audio samples), MIDI, WAV, AIFF, MP3, SD2, and AU.[1]
The engine features 64-voice polyphony by default. Soundbanks include three banks comprising 128 instruments: Bank 0 (General MIDI), Bank 1 (Beatnik Special) features unique patches designed by Beatnik, and Bank 2 (Custom) can be used by the user for custom instruments. It also includes support for reverb and chorus effects.[1] Beatnik Editor is Beatnik's software used for authoring music with BAE.
BAE was originally developed by Steve Hales and Jim Nitchals at the video game company Halestorm in 1991, under the name SoundMusicSys. It was used in several Mac video games to play MIDIs, using their own custom samples. Hales and Nitchals transferred the technology to Igor's Software Labs (aka IgorLabs), and a more sophisticated version of SoundMusicSys was shipped on WebTV devices in 1996. Following this, Beatnik (then known as Headspace) acquired the engine, renamed it to Headspace Audio Engine (and subsequently Beatnik Audio Engine) and launched it as a browser plug-in named Beatnik Player.
During 1999-2000, an optimized version of BAE was created for devices such as mobile phones, known as miniBAE; this first shipped on the Nokia 3510, released in 2002. A rewritten version called mobileBAE was released in 2002. Instead of HSB and RMF, it uses the more standard Downloadable Sounds (.dls) format for banks, and Extensible Music Format (.xmf) respectively.