Synthetic-music mobile application format, abbreviated SMAF, is a music data format specified by Yamaha

Yamaha (manufacturer)

is a multinational corporation and conglomerate based in Japan with a wide range of products and services, predominantly musical instruments, electronics, motorcycles and power sports equipment.-History:...

 for portable electronic devices, such as cell phones and PDAs

Personal digital assistant

A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...

. The file extension for SMAF is .MMF and is common as ringtones for mobile phones with one of five sound chips.

SMAF resembles MIDI, but also supports graphics and PCM sound playback. Its MIDI playback is produced via FM synthesis or PCM wavetable synthesis

Wavetable synthesis

Wavetable synthesis is used in certain digital music synthesizers to implement a restricted form of real-time additive synthesis. The technique was first developed by Wolfgang Palm of PPG in the late 1970s and published in 1979, and has since been used as the primary synthesis method in...

, where instrument data (parameters and/or PCM samples) is stored within the .MMF file itself, similar to module file

Module file

Module files are a family of music file formats originating from the MOD file format on Amiga systems used in late 1980s...

s. This enables users to create custom instruments, which will sound exactly the same on devices with the same chip.

There are five major versions of SMAF: MA1, MA2, MA3, MA5, and MA7.

External links

List of mobile phones that support SMAF