Streaming Audio termonology
By MP3 Sound | October 10, 2008
* Bit-rate: (bps = bits-per-second) the rate at which bits (1 or 0 - a single piece of information) are streamed through a system. A prefix of k (ex, kbps) means that the units are multiplied by 1000, i.e., 28.8 kbps = 28,800 bits-per-second.
* Freeware: software that is free to use forever. There are no strings, no catches. However, some programmers ask that you not tamper with the software and redistribute it, while other go so far as to provide the source code for the program.
* Shareware: software that is free to download or share with friends. Typically it comes crippled or with some kind of nag built in to encourage registering the software. It is understood that to honestly use shareware, you must register the software after you have tried it out and if you decide to keep it. Otherwise, you should erase it. Registering costs vary from product to product.
* WAV: a sound file format that is uncompressed. WAV formats perfectly preserve the audio information with zero compression. Therefore, they are very easy to decode and translate into sound, but they also produce huge data files (250 Mbytes for 40 minutes of mono sound).
* MP3: a sound file format that follows a standard compression technique, officially known as MPEG 2 Layer-3. Video and audio can both be stored in the MP3 format. Virtually no audio information is lost in converting to the MP3 format if the same sampling frequency or greater is used for encoding compared to that used in the original recording. MP3 files are much smaller than the original file (5.5 Mbytes for 40 minutes of 16,000 Hz Mono). Requires a special program for playback which can be downloaded for free from many sites. Check out the Web site of the guys who invented the MP3 format and are busy on MP4.
* Streaming Audio a method of playing audio files from the web. The audio is played as it arrives off the Internet. The file is not preserved on the computer, so a network connection must be sustained to play the audio file. A variation of this method is employed here, called pseudo-streaming. Real Audio uses a variation that dynamically compensates for slow connections.
Topics: Streaming Audio |
Comments
« Benefits of streaming audio! | Home| Why adding audio to your website is important! »