Audio Streaming Information

Adding Sound To Your Web Site - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly


Many webmasters like the idea of adding background music to their web sites but most shy away from doing it worrying about slow loading pages and large file sizes. There are many different ways to add background music to your site and some of them don't require large files to achieve professional results. Let's examine all the different ways to add background music to your site and rate them to find the best solution for you.

1) MIDI Files

MIDI files are very small because they actually use your sound card's built-in instruments to create the sounds. The problem is that most sound cards don't have any decent sounds to start with, plus no two sound cards sound alike and therefore the results are very unpredictable. MIDI files usually sound like they're coming from one of those cheap Casio keyboards. Using MIDI for background music is very likely to make your site seem amateurish. Want to know how to do it anyway? Just add the line to your site. (Replace xyz with the name of the MIDI file you want to use!) The Autostart command will play the file automatically when the page is loaded.

PROS; Very small file size, easy to implement

CONS: Unpredictable results, amateurish sounds

2) WAV Files

Using the WAV file format allows you to add professional sounding recordings to your site but the problem is that even if you use a low quality setting like 11k/8bit, the file sizes are still very large and it will take a long time for your music to load. And slow loading pages are the worst thing that can happen to a site. Implementing a WAV file on a web page is easy. Just add the line to your page's HTML code. There's an additional command to loop the WAV file but WAV files do not loop cleanly with the embed command.

PROS: Many Quality Levels, Easy to implement

CONS: Large File Sizes, WAV Files do not loop

3) MP3 Files

MP3 files are highly compressed and don't take that long to load but the problem is that MP3s need to bring up an external player program and which in some cases takes your visitors away from your site altogether. Also, MP3 files don't loop cleanly.

PROS: Smaller File Sizes, Good Quality Possible

CONS: Needs external player software, not loopable

4) Flash

If you own a program that can create Flash files, you will have lots of flexibility in adding sound to your site. Flash lets you import WAV as well as MP3 Files and then creates quite small files from these sounds that will load automatically on your site. You can set the quality level and therefore decide how large you want the Flash file to be. Flash also allows you to loop short pieces of sound to create 'continuous' background music files that can be quite small. But please note that only imported WAV files can be looped in Flash, MP3 files will not loop cleanly.

PROS: Great Flexibility, Small File Sizes, expecially when looping sounds

CONS: You need to buy expensive Flash software to create Flash Files

5) Pre-Made Flash Loops

The newest thing on the market are pre-built Flash Music Loops. These files are professionally recorded, loop almost indefinitely and most of these Flash Music Loops are only about 20k in size so they load almost instantly. Flash Music Loops are available at http://www.flashmusictracks.com and currently there are three different loop packages available in all kinds of music styles from classical to techno. Using these pre-built Flash files is easy. Simply upload the "xyz.swf" Flash file to your server and add a few lines from the corresponding "xyz.html" file to your web page and presto...instant professional sounding background music.

PROS: Extremely small file size, professional quality music

CONS: None

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.

(c)2004 Alan Steward

About The Author

Article by Alan Steward, a professional recording engineer and producer who worked with many Grammy award winning groups and musicians.

(c)2004 Alan Steward - http://www.musicleads.net

  


MORE RESOURCES:

Radio on the go
Chicago Sun-Times, United States - 2 hours ago
As with streaming audio, you just launch the app, click Record, and then start the video stream. There's nothing fudgy or imprecise about the capture ...


Trimming the costs of your high-tech life
Seattle Times, United States - 4 hours ago
Wireless phone service, in turn, offers easy cost savings if your plan includes excess minutes, video or audio streaming, or navigation services you rarely ...


Aggies to stream sports of all sorts
Greensboro News Record, NC - 4 hours ago
"We provide the audio and video sources; he encodes and decodes the information and distributes it to the server, which allows it to go to the public. ...


Sony Ericsson seeks India patent for new audio headset
Hindu, India - Oct 9, 2008
... to handle voice call by wireless connection to a phone and also to receive streaming audio such as music from a streaming audio source, it added. ...


Minghella Directed 'Madama Butterfly' Returns to the Stage ...
Broadway World, NY - 19 hours ago
In addition to providing audio recordings through the new Met on Rhapsody on-demand service, the Met also presents free live audio streaming of performances ...


SonicSwap Puts Your iTunes Library On The Web For Streaming And ...
Washington Post, United States - Oct 9, 2008
The site pulls audio and video through the YouTube API, and while it comes up with a few false matches (playing back bad cover versions or karaoke), ...


International Datacasting Corporation to Showcase Latest Products ...
MarketWatch - 23 hours ago
The product also includes a new transport stream to IP transcoding capability ideal for IPTV applications - Expanded SFX Pro Audio Receivers - The latest ...


Feature: 'Next-Gen Audio Square-Off: PlayStation 3 vs. Xbox 360'
Gamasutra, CA - 20 hours ago
Fourth, the Blu-ray disc storage was immense, which meant that we did not have to reduce the sampling rate of our streaming audio or overcompress it, ...


BBC News

MySpace Music Offers Free Streaming and MP3 Downloads
NewsOXY, FL - Sep 24, 2008
The new music service is offering free and unlimited audio streaming and DRM-free MP3 downloads. EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music ...
MySpace Music sets launch date Variety
MySpace Music attracts criticisms from indie labels Utalkmarketing
MySpace Music goes live in the US musicweek.com
WELT ONLINE - Digitaltrends.com
all 862 news articles


Interview: 'This Week in Tech' podcaster Leo Laporte
TechRadar.com, UK - 2 hours ago
"You couldn't do live streaming before. Until a couple of years ago, when companies like Stickam came along, it wasn't technically feasible. ...

audio streaming - Google News

Article List | Index | Site Map
All logos, trademarks and articles on this site are property and copyright of their respective owner(s).
The comments are property of their posters, all the rest is Copyright © 2006 CanadaSEEK.com - All Rights Reserved.