---

Audio Unit Development Fundamentals

When you set out to create an audio unit, the power and flexibility of Core Audio’s Audio Unit framework give you the ability to go just about anywhere with sound. However, this power and flexibility also mean that there is a lot to learn to get started on the right foot. In this chapter, you get a bird’s-eye view of this leading edge technology, to serve you as you take the first steps toward becoming an audio unit developer.

You begin here with a quick look at the audio unit development cycle. Then, you focus in on what audio units are, and discover the important role of the Core Audio SDK in audio unit development. You learn how audio units function as plug-ins in Mac OS X and in concert with the applications that use them. Finally, you get introduced to the Audio Unit Specification, and how it defines the plug-in API that audio unit developers and application developers both write to.

After reading this chapter you’ll be ready to dig in to the architectural and development details presented in “The Audio Unit.”

If you want to get your hands on building an audio unit right away, you can skip this chapter for now and go straight to “Tutorial: Building a Simple Effect Unit with a Generic View.” As you build the audio unit, you can refer back to this chapter, and to other sections in this document, for conceptual information related to what you’re doing.

Contents:

The Audio Unit Development Cycle
What Is An Audio Unit?
Audio Units as Plug-Ins
Audio Units as Instances of the Model-View-Controller Design Pattern
Audio Units in Action
Audio Unit Validation and Testing

---