# 17.1 `sunaudiodev` -- Access to Sun audio hardware

Availability: SunOS.

This module allows you to access the Sun audio interface. The Sun audio hardware is capable of recording and playing back audio data in u-LAW format with a sample rate of 8K per second. A full description can be found in the audio(7I) manual page.

The module defines the following variables and functions:

`error`
  This exception is raised on all errors. The argument is a string describing what went wrong.

`open` (mode)
  This function opens the audio device and returns a Sun audio device object. This object can then be used to do I/O on. The mode parameter is one of `'r'` for record-only access, `'w'` for play-only access, `'rw'` for both and `'control'` for access to the control device. Since only one process is allowed to have the recorder or player open at the same time it is a good idea to open the device only for the activity needed. See audio(7I) for details.

  As per the manpage, this module first looks in the environment variable `AUDIODEV` for the base audio device filename. If not found, it falls back to `/dev/audio`. The control device is calculated by appending ``ctl'' to the base audio device.

- 17.1.1 Audio Device Objects