Subject line says it all: I would like to know what is the best
compressed audio format that is supported by just a modern JDK (say 1.6).
The primary criterion that I care about is that the format is supported by as many different sounds cards and operating systems as possible.
The secondary critera that I care about is high compressability (even at the expense of loss of quality), since the sounds that I am interested in are not music but simple user feedback clips.
I would greatly prefer not to deal with
JMF or some 3rd party plugin, since I do not want to deal with the hassle of distributing extra jar files. I realize, unfortunately, that this rules out mp3. (Sun, when you going to get your act together and have the JDK support mp3?)
I assume that the formats supported natively by the JDK are the ones listed as instances of [AudioFileFormat.Type|http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/sound/sampled/AudioFileFormat.Type.html]:
AIFC
AIFF
AU
SND
WAVE
AIFC appears to be a compressed (but lossless--so its not very compressed) version of AIFF.
AU appears to have tons of modes, some of which are uncompressed, others of which are compressed (both lossy and lossless?).
Does anyone know if there are problems with some of the above formats on certain hardware/software combinations, even tho the formats are supposed to be supported by cross platform Java?