RFC 2586 (rfc2586) - Page 1 of 5
The Audio/L16 MIME content type
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group J. Salsman
Request for Comments: 2586 H. Alvestrand
Category: Informational UNINETT
May 1999
The Audio/L16 MIME content type
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999). All Rights Reserved.
1. Introduction
This document defines the audio/L16 MIME type, a reasonable quality
audio format for use in Internet applications.
Possible application areas include E-mail, Web served content, file
upload in Web forms, and more.
2. The need for the Audio/L16 MIME type
The set of IETF standard MIME types for audio is small; it consists
of only the audio/basic and audio/32kadpcm types, which have a
sampling rate of 8000 samples/second.
Rates below 11025 may obscure consonant information, even for
single-voice speech. Common compressions, such as LPC, are known to
be microphone-dependant and lossy. Thus far all IETF MIME Audio
types either default to 8000 samples per second or use LPC.
In order for advanced speech recognition and related educational
applications to make use of internet transports (such as RFC 1867
file uploading) which use MIME typing, higher standards are required.
This type repairs that lack by registering a very simple MIME type
that allows higher rate, linear-encoded audio with multiple channels.
This is an IESG approved MIME type, and its definition is therefore
published as an RFC.
Salsman Informational