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The mu-Law (or u-Law) format uses logarithmic algorithm to compress 12 bit linear samples to 8 bit bytes. This format was used by some Sun workstations long time ago. It's still used by the telecom industry but there is no idea in using it in computer applications.
This format is defined in the CCITT/ITU recommendation G.711.
No hardware supports this format. OSS handles it using a 8 bit conversion tables which doesn't make good to the sound quality (here are no plans to improve this mechanism). If some application really needs to use the mu-Law format then the recommended approach is doing the conversions in the application using the proper algorithm.