MiniBAE

MiniBAE is a mobile sample-based audio engine developed from 1991 to 2001, later succeeded by the MobileBAE.

The soundbanks are stored in a proprietary '.hsb' (Headspace Sound Bank) format.

The technology was first developed by Steve Hales in a video game porting 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.

Steve later ended up selling the technology to Beatnik, Inc. (called Headspace, Inc. at the time)

Later, MiniBAE appeared in 1997 as a browser plugin used to play "RMF" (Rich Media Format) files, a direct precursor to MXMF files that used .hsb files instead of .dls.

This format was invented as a way of storing music in a small size, so people with a dial-up connection could download it relatively quickly.

MiniBAE was also used in older Java versions (until JRE 7), and BeOS.

Nokia ended up licensing MiniBAE in 1999, but didn't begin using it until the Nokia 3510 and Nokia 7650.

Since the shutdown of Beatnik, Inc. in 2009, the source code has been released under a BSD license.

The engine is most notable for being used in Nokia phones made from 2002 to 2009.

An emulator of the audio engine can be found here.