Site Reference Forums

mobtex · 2006-12-24 18:10:15

There's a few points about this article about adding audio to websites that need touching on:

Midi is not a suitable format for voice or reproduced music. Midi is limited to 147 different sounds and you can play a number of notes at a time. In terms of sound midi is black and white in a multi-colour world.

Wav is not suitable for website use as it takes up too much space and bandwidth. Wave sounds will reproduce voice and music but could lead to issues with playback. While filesize and bandwidth issues shouldn't be an issue today you need to remember that percentage of your traffic who still uses dialup. You can't alienate them if you want to boost your sales.

Using flash for audio inside the swf is one thing, using a swf to playback an mp3 file is a totally different story. Flash can only play files encoded with sample rates of 44,100 32,000 or 11025 anything else will playback fast like the smurfs or slow like a stretched cassette tape. Macromedia / Adobe are aware of this as it's been reported a million times but they've not fixed it yet.

A lot of audio software is easy enough to get to grips with but what about some hints to suitable file formats, reasonable file sizes and playback options.

I blame Dave, his festive rant got me set on one myself and I only came on the 'puter to check traffic and stats!

I suppose the best thing that can come from that article is that soom noob decides it's a good idea to enrichen their site with some audio and maybe a bit of video. The down side is some noob might decide it's a good idea to enriched the web with utter garb. LOL it didn't do myspace or youtube any harm!

beatbox · 2006-12-25 08:37:49

Hi thanks for that!I am doing a site, but I want the music to play in the site-what the best way
or should I do it for it to play in pop-up player (WMP etc.)
Happy XMAS

mobtex · 2006-12-25 17:14:18

Depends on what the audio format is....

Real Producer will create rm and ram files for streaming audio.

Mp3 streaming is easy enough to sort out to if you understand the basics, it's simply a text file with the url of the media file to stream to the client. Live streaming is a different thing. A few years ago when I was working in radio I got the station online during my lunchbreak. The chairman came in ten minutes later, congratulated me on doing it and asked me to turn it off as the licence didn't cover the right to broadcast online.

When it comes to players there are loads of options. I use Scott Schiller's Sound Manager on this site for the virtual carillon but after checking his site for the link I see he's now released Sound Manager 2.

The sound manager software is a javascript handler for a flash file that will play mp3 files from a simple enough to handle xml file. Great on scripted browsers, remember you need to create a noscript fallback for browsers that are not script enabled.

Windows Media Player can be plugged into a page to play an mp3 file with or without controls, auto starting or not:

Code: html

      <object type="application/x-mplayer2"   width="300"     height="40"   data="blah.mp3">

        <param name="src"                     value="blah.mp3" />

        <param name="filename"                value="blah.mp3" />

        <param name="type"                    value="application/x-mplayer2" />

        Your 'puter doesn't have Windows Media Player <a href="blah.mp3" title="save blah">click here to download blah.mp3</a>

      </object>

The above code wont work on a Mac running Safari but Scott Schiller's Sound Manger seems so far to work on any platform as long as the files are encoded at non-smurf sample rates! blinka

Enjoy

Northie · 2006-12-26 12:48:42

if i hear audio on a site without my say so, i hit he back button or close button as soon as i can.

i hate audio on site

has anyone ever experiances increased sales with it?

I'm sure poeple have - it's the spoken word version of the mile-long sales page, so here's a thought - try writing better sales copy and incraese sales even further!

Drabfantasy · 2006-12-26 13:05:15

I agree, working in the Cruise Industry means numerous visits to various Web Sites. Twenty visits to Royal Caribbean website a day has led me to using my computer with sound off. Nice once, after 14,000,560 visits AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

mobtex · 2006-12-27 05:43:00

I agree, audio on a website that just plays onload is annoying to say the least. I can't stand flash animations with audio when there is no option to disable the sound or skip the intro either.

Ironically, I have 35,000 pages on my site which play audio as soon as the page loads, saying that we sell ringtones so I think we're one of the very few exceptions that can get away with it.

Even so, I'm taking Northie's point onboard here. Maybe I should revise the way we play previews in the new year. It'd be interesting to run some tests over a few days to see if it does or doesn't do anything to the conversion rates we have.

Some time back I created Blogging by Phone but haven't had the time to get the project finished yet, when it is done it will be a very easy way to put voice recordings on your site. Make a call, record your podcast / whatever and hang up. It then appears on your site's podcast feed automatically.

beatledave · 2006-12-27 08:46:46

I have a page dedicated to audio and video clips and it's one of the more popular pages on my site, but I don't load it down with embeeded players. I store the wav's, mp3's, ram's, etc in my directory and let the call it with < a href=

This way the page loads fast and everything works just fine. Take a peek. It definatelty helps my sells. Of course when people go to this page they are expecting audio. I'd never put it on any page and have it auto start. Big turn off!!!

http://beatlesnumber9.com/clips.html

PumaSpirit · 2006-12-27 11:52:02

Northie wrote:
if i hear audio on a site without my say so, i hit he back button or close button as soon as i can.

i hate audio on site

has anyone ever experiances increased sales with it?

I'm sure poeple have - it's the spoken word version of the mile-long sales page, so here's a thought - try writing better sales copy and incraese sales even further!

Northie, you took the words right out of my mouth! Audio is extremely annoying, to say the least. If we want noise we can turn on the radio or TV. The internet is NOT a place where we want to be bombarded with noise pollution. Some of the voices recorded certainly fall into the category of: JUST SING IN THE SHOWER, BUSTER!!!!!! <---- Yeah, I'm yelling because the fool is singing off key at the top of his lungs, lol guitarist

I have yet to talk to someone who actually likes the voices or music someone plays on their sites. Anyone here who likes it?

Last edited by PumaSpirit (2006-12-27 11:54:48)

DMX · 2006-12-27 12:19:51

PumaSpirit wrote:
I have yet to talk to someone who actually likes the voices or music someone plays on their sites. Anyone here who likes it?

I kind of doubt it.

Even if by some fluke of nature, akin to a total planetary alignment, they happen to be playing something you did happen to like, why would you want the crappy internet optimized version?

Most of us have a few thousand favorites two clicks away if we want sound.

It's an amateur thing. On your very first site, you load all kinds of crap on it..., because you can. A little while later every decision goes through our own "filter". How much page weight, is it very necessary, will it appeal to (almost) everyone, it's effect on conversion, etc.

Music is a no brainer. Put up two versions of your site, with and without the bagpipes. Track the one second visits and enjoy, I'm confident, a fourfold increase in longer duration visitors without.

Personally, I can be two websites away when the page stutters because you're even thinking about sending me audio yikes

Last edited by DMX (2006-12-27 12:21:29)

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Site Reference Forums

#1 2006-12-24 18:10:15

audio on a website

#2 2006-12-25 08:37:49

Re: audio on a website

#3 2006-12-25 17:14:18

Re: audio on a website

Code: html

#4 2006-12-26 12:48:42

Re: audio on a website

#5 2006-12-26 13:05:15

Re: audio on a website

#6 2006-12-27 05:43:00

Re: audio on a website

#7 2006-12-27 08:46:46

Re: audio on a website

#8 2006-12-27 11:52:02

Re: audio on a website

Northie wrote:

#9 2006-12-27 12:19:51

Re: audio on a website

PumaSpirit wrote:

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