Streaming Audio
I'd say pretty much everyone has come across either Real Player,
Windows Media or Quicktime at some point in their web surfing lives
but if you don't know what I'm talking about click here
for a basic explanation.
The technology is always improving and even for us 56k modem users
streaming audio is a great way to quickly present a piece of audio
without forcing your visitors to sit through long download times.
That being said, the quality isn't great for modem based streaming,
and I find it most useful for presenting segments, say 30 seconds,
of a song so people can quickly have a listen, get an idea of the
song, and decide if they want to go ahead and download the associated
multi-megabyte MP3.
For Broadband visitors, streaming audio starts to to take on new
meaning with the ability to present much higher quality audio, live
streaming, internet radio etc.
I often find that people come to me thinking it will be extremely
expensive to have streaming audio on their site. This isn't necessarily
true. Streaming audio can work in two ways - the first being that
the song is streamed directly from the web host. Using this method
I can easily add streaming to your site with no charge-per-stream
or extra costs associated. The example on the right uses this technique.
The disadvantage of this technique is that there are more likely
to be breaks in the playback so I tend to reduce the audio quality
a bit more to compensate for this. Also, using this technique I
will need to set up different links for different connection speeds.
That is, one link for modem users, which streams the lowest quality
audio, and another link for DSL/Broadband users so they can enjoy
higher quality audio.
The second method is to stream the song from either a Real Player,
Windows Media or Quicktime server. This technique is more reliable
(i.e. less breaks in the music) and allows me to set up only one
link. The server will detect the connection speed of the visitor
and adapt the quality of the audio to that speed. While this technique
is obviously better it tends to get expensive, often with charges
like $2 each time someone listens to a song.
Please note that while I mostly refer to 'songs' in this section,
streaming audio is by no means limited to music. If you want other
types of audio such as interviews, commentaries, recorded sound
effects and anything else you can think of then that is no problem
at all. |
| THE
MYSTERY GUEST |
How
could I resist using a streaming audio example to profile
music from my own band, The
Mystery Guest ? I couldn't, so here's one of our songs
in all three formats for both modem and broadband connection
I'm using the technique I use for audio streaming on most
sites I do - It costs you no extra (i.e. no per-stream charges
from the web host) and generally serves it's purpose well.
|
| "Enchantment" |
The links below will be
activated soon ! |
| Windows
Media |
| Modem |
Broadband |
 Download
the free Windows Media Player |
| Real
Player |
| Modem |
Broadband |
 Download
the free Real One Player |
| Quicktime |
| Modem |
Broadband |
 Download
the free Quicktime
Player |
|
