W3C Promotes Web Audio API To Official Standard

The W3C has promoted the Web Audio API to now being an official standard as a JavaScript API for creating and manipulating audio content directly within web browsers.

The W3C sums up the Web Audio API as "a JavaScript API for creating, shaping, and manipulating sounds directly in a Web browser. It is already widely deployed for the creation of music and sound effects on Web pages, for the creation of online musical instruments, for Web games, and for collaborative artworks such as sound installations."

The Web Audio API is focused on creation and manipulation of audio rather than just audio playback. The Web Audio API was also engineered to support collaborative, multi-user environments.

Web Audio API supports modular routing, high dynamic range, support for filters and various effects, support for audio sources from audio and video media element tags, WebRTC integration, spatialized audio support, a convolution engine, and other features.

In today's announcement of the Web Audio API reaching W3C Recommendation status as an official standard, they also confirmed that the Web Audio API v2 is already in the works. The Web Audio API specification is available from W3.org.