Editor's Note
07.11.
00
In continuing our series of
articles on putting sound on your website today's article will
focus on the alternate types of compression formats available.
Our author will also give some of the pro's and con's
concerning the use of the different formats. We hope you enjoy
the second in our three part series and invite you back for
the third article on Thursday. If you do need to contact John
regarding questions or if you have something nice to say about
his article, email him at:
kingskid@netrover.com
Putting Sound on your Web Site
II
Making MIDI Files for your
site-Part2
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In the prior article, I discussed the fact that MIDI is the best
choice when adding background music to your web site. Choruses of
your favorite songs can be looped to play while the images and textare loading. MIDI is the best choice because it takes up very littleroom within your web space(2-7k bytes).
There are other types of sound files that can be useful on your web
site, such as MP3's, au, wave and real audio(.ra) just to name a few.
These are not as practical as background sounds due to their large
file size but can have some unique features that make them
useful.
MP3
MP3(Moving Picture Experts Group1Layer3 Audio) is a type of sound
file used to compress large sound files. The most common use of MP3
files is to compress a CD album. A complete CD album can be compressed into a file size of approximately 5MB. This has sparked
a great deal of illegal copying on the web as people can now copy CD
albums into MP3 format and share it on the web.
Nevertheless, a good use for MP3 is for a 'download' on a web site.
If you have an audio speech or song album you want people to listen
to, MP3 is the way to go. Many musicians put their songs as wave files on their sites for download which can take too long to
download. A typical song might take 100-200MB in wave form but saved
as an MP3 would take only 1MB or less. The amazing thing about this
type of compression is that it replicates the quality of the wave file as well. However, even though a song in MP3 format takes only
1MB in file size, it still takes 15-20 minutes to download for most
people on using a 28.8 modem line. Although with faster lines this
is becoming the best way to download music. There is a faster way to
broadcast your songs that will play a large sound file almost immediately. This is the Streaming Real Audio File (.ra). Many web
sites wisely give the visitor a choice between a real audio or a MP3
download.
Real Audio
A Real Audio file will play in seconds. The reason for this is that
the real audio file plays as it downloads. This is true of even a
very large audio file. The quality of a real audio file is poor though. It is excellent for talking but not for showing off a
musicians work. Many radio stations keep archives of broadcasts so
the visitor can go back to programs to hear a certain person talk.
Sometimes when there is net congestion a real audio file that will
cut out and then come back which can be frustrating to a listener if
the net congestion continues.
The other problem with real audio is that it costs the web owner to
use it. Anyone using real audio must go to someone owning a real
server. They are given a text file on their server(.ram) that connects to the real server. This is turn connects to the real audio
file(.ra). Most real servers charge about $40 US/month to put a couple of songs on their real server.
Wave
Wave files, although large in file size, can still be used on web
sites. A web designer may want to person to speak "Hello" or some
phrase when a button is pressed. This can done with a wave file.
Provided the wave file is less than a second this may provide a file
size of about 10k.
You can get a free demo of a program like Cool Edit Pro on the web to
record the wave file. After recording the file, you need to change the
sampling rate to about 11khz and use an 8 bit resolution in mono. This
greatly reduces the file size but compromises a bit on quality. Songs can alternatively be saved in the real audio format as a
'.ra' file. These can be used like a wave file and then will not connect to
the real server as mentioned above. Files in the .ra format are even
smaller in size than the .wav files.
Sun's ".au" Files
Many web designers are now using java applets and scripts on the web.
Most applets use the .au format to put sound files into the applets.
There is often a chance to customize sounds in the applet's parameter
tags. It is important though in many applets to use a sampling rate
of 8k when saving the .au file. Otherwise the sound will not work in
the applet.
I will talk focus on making MIDI for your web site next.
Putting Sound on your Web Site-John Rickey@All rights reserved, July 2000.
John Rickey is an experienced MIDI arranger. He graduated from
University of Toronto with a degree in music and has worked from
studio recordings to Movies with his arranging. He's done most
of the e-card music for such large sites as Snap.com (NBC),
Ulead, All-Yours Internet Solutions and more. You can contact
him at
kingskid@netrover.com
or visit his MIDI Design Site at
www.scugog-net.com.
He operates one of the largest educational kid's sites, click on
this for Kid's Educational Sites.
Copyright 2000 Robin Porter
CEO RP Associates
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We at the Editorial Team would like to thank all our readers
for reading WebProNews and we hope you find this information
useful.
Peter Thiruselvam
Editor
The WebProNews Team
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