MiniBAE

MiniBAE, previously known as SoundMusicSys and later Beatnik Audio Engine, is a mobile sample-based audio engine developed from 1991 to 2002, later developed and rewritten into the MobileBAE engine. It's soundbanks are stored in a proprietary '.hsb' (Headspace Sound Bank) format. It has been used in a variety of products, such as video games, WebTV, operating systems and eventually mobile phones, the most widespread usage of it. Custom .hsb banks can be created using Beatnik Editor after running the Expert Converter.

History
The technology was first developed by Steve Hales and Jim Nitchals in their video game company called Halestorm in 1991. At the time, it was called SoundMusicSys, appearing in many successful video games for Macintosh, and in Microsoft's WebTV devices. In 1994, Steve and Jim transferred the technology to Igor's Software Labs (aka IgorLabs), which Beatnik. (called Headspace, Inc. at the time) would eventually acquire. Later, BAE appeared in 1997 as a browser plugin used to play "RMF" (Rich Media Format) files, a direct precursor to MXMF files that used proprietary bank formats instead of .dls. This format was a way of storing music in a small size, so people with a dial-up connection could download it relatively quickly.

BAE was also used in older Java versions (until JRE 7), and BeOS. Nokia started licensing miniBAE (a smaller version of BAE) in 1999, but did not begin using it until the Nokia 3510 and Nokia 7650. It was used on many Nokia phones between 2002 and 2010, although after 2004 it had been deprecated in favor of MobileBAE and was only being used on low end S40 phones at this point. The last known phone to use it was the Nokia 2220 slide.

Danger's Hiptop/Sidekick devices also used miniBAE up until 2004-2005, when they switched to MobileBAE. A handful of Sony Ericsson phones running Symbian UIQ, such as the Sony Ericsson P800, also use the engine. Motorola are also alleged to have used it on some phones. MiniBAE was also ported to Linux, but not included in the source code release for an unknown reason.

Since the shutdown of Beatnik in 2011, the source code has been released under a BSD license. An enthusiast who goes by the name zefie managed to get the code to work on Linux (ANSI, waveout only), and Windows.

Links

 * BeatnikX Player - based on the old ActiveX plugin
 * The miniBAE codebase.
 * A fan-driven way to make the codebase work on modern Windows.
 * Beatnik Editor - allows you to make your own RMF songs and HSB banks, as well as wire your banks to a MIDI sequencer for composing purposes