The audio stream functions are for playing digital sounds that are too big to fit in a regular SAMPLE structure, either because they are huge files that you want to load in pieces as the data is required, or because you are doing something clever like generating the waveform on the fly.
AUDIOSTREAM *play_audio_stream(int len, bits, stereo, freq, vol, pan);
This function creates a new audio stream and starts it playing. The
length is the size of each transfer buffer (in samples), which should be
at least 2K: larger buffers are more efficient and require fewer updates,
but result in more latency between you providing the data and it actually
being played. The bits parameter must be 8 or 16, freq is the sample rate
of the data, and the vol and pan values use the same 0-255 ranges as the
regular sample playing functions. If you want to adjust the pitch,
volume, or panning of a stream once it is playing, you can use the
regular voice_*() functions with stream->voice as a parameter. The sample
data is always in unsigned format, with stereo waveforms consisting of
alternate left/right samples.
void stop_audio_stream(AUDIOSTREAM *stream);
Destroys an audio stream when it is no longer required.
void *get_audio_stream_buffer(AUDIOSTREAM *stream);
You must call this function at regular intervals while an audio stream is
playing, to provide the next buffer of sample data (the smaller the
stream buffer size, the more often it must be called). If it returns
NULL, the stream is still playing the previous lot of data, so you don't
need to do anything. If it returns a value, that is the location of the
next buffer to be played, and you should load the appropriate number of
samples (however many you specified when creating the stream) to that
address, for example using an fread() from a disk file. After filling the
buffer with data, call free_audio_stream_buffer() to indicate that the
new data is now valid. Note that this function should not be called from
a timer handler...
void free_audio_stream_buffer(AUDIOSTREAM *stream);
Call this function after get_audio_stream_buffer() returns a non-NULL
address, to indicate that you have loaded a new block of samples to that
location and the data is now ready to be played.