CoreAudio

CoreAudio refers to the built in audio subsystems of Mac OS X. Similar in concept to the Sound Manager in Mac OS 9 and previous Mac OS’, CoreAudio handles all audio communication for the system itself, and any applications written to support it. This new system is more than just a rewrite of Sound Manager, and includes many great new advances. CoreAudio now supports multichannel audio, basically as many channels as you can plug in devices for. With the advanced setup utilities in Mac OS X 10.2 (a.k.a. Jaguar) you even have the capability to select which channels from the system go to which outputs on your available hardware interfaces. CoreAudio is also ready for the future with the capability to support up to 192 kHz audio at any bit rate from 16 bit to 32 bit (yes you read that right, you can do 192 kHz at 32bit).