Audio File Formats
Audio File Formats...
Adding music or video streams to your website is a definite plus for
revenue generation. Audio-video streams serve two purposes.
Primarily, audio and video streaming is used for
entertainment. A more practical use of audio-video streaming is for revenue
generation by using this technology to promote and demonstrate your products.
Normally, professional website designers are leery of
adding multi-media streams to a website. However, the spread of
high-speed internet connection throughout the world has finally removed
the barrier for the use of multi-media streams. In this article, let us deal exclusively
with audio streams. Audio files have different formats. The most
popular among these audio formats are the MP3 and MIDI sound format.
The question is, “what exactly is a MIDI and an MP3 and what
are the differences?” Below is a collection of sound file
formats together with their descriptions to help you decide which one
to use in your website.
MIDI is a music file type that is considerably lightweight when it
comes to the size of the file. The reason for this is that MIDI
utilizes the built-in devices in the sound card of your computer. Of
course, sound cards don’t sound the same so playing one MIDI
file on two computers simultaneously may produce slightly different
results. Another problem of MIDI files is that they sound mostly like
ring tones of older model cellular phones. Having this installed in
your website may give it an amateurish
feel. You definitely don’t want to be labeled as an amateur
especially when you’re selling something. On the plus side,
because of their small size in terms of kilobytes, people who use
56kbps modems to connect to the internet will be able to appreciate the
speed at which your website loads into their browsers.
MP3 is an audio file that is highly compressed to achieve a smaller
file size. For people using DSL internet connections, downloading a 5MB
MP3 file will most probably take less than a minute. For the slower 56
kbps modems, it takes approximately 3 to 5 minutes to download a single
song with average playing time. Because of its compressed nature, the
sounds produced by MP3 files are not as good as those you hear from
your CD. Furthermore, you will have to “loop” a
music file if you want it to play continuously in the background while
people surf your website. MP3 files are very
difficult to loop. The biggest disadvantage of using MP3 files is that
they require MP3 player programs. Once you enter a website with MP3 background music,
your Windows Media player or Real Player might open automatically to
play the file.
The best sound file format in terms of quality is the WAV file format.
Using WAV format to record your audio will give you recording studio
quality audio. The BIG PROBLEM of WAV is its file size. Even with a DSL
or cable internet connection, your browser will have a hard time
loading a web page using WAV for its audio stream.
Familiarity with flash files is an advantage when trying to incorporate
audio streams into your website. To make the music play
continuously, you will have to perform the process of looping. Flash
files can be used with either MP3 or WAV but, only WAV files go through
the looping process without any difficulty.
To your success, Michael Thomas
P.S. As you can see there are many different ways to add background
music to your web pages and you don't have to worry about slow loading
pages if you choose the right file format.
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