Adding audio to a webpage

[Jim Sheard]

I just wanted to put a voice message on a website and thought that mp3
would be ok until I read about there being some kind of copyright
problem.

Hi, John.

The 'copyright problem' with mp3 is mainly theoretical, a little bit
strategic, and won't affect your usage in any way. Encode your *.wav to
mp3, if that's what you want to do.

*.ogg has advantages over *.mp3 - better compression-to-quality and not
even a theoretical sniff of patent issues on the encoders/players.

But mp3 is the widespread solution that you seem to be looking for.

Jim

 

[John Latter]

Hi, John.

The 'copyright problem' with mp3 is mainly theoretical, a little bit
strategic, and won't affect your usage in any way. Encode your *.wav to
mp3, if that's what you want to do.

*.ogg has advantages over *.mp3 - better compression-to-quality and not
even a theoretical sniff of patent issues on the encoders/players.

But mp3 is the widespread solution that you seem to be looking for.

Jim

Thanks Jim, you've put the kind of perspective on the copyright
problem that I can understand - I'll use mp3!

--

John Latter

The 'Socially Acceptable Violence' website:
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/sac.html

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html

 

[Toby A Inkster]

I was thinking in terms of visitors who might not have thought of
adding any media software beyond that which came with their computer -
thats why I wanted some kind of 'general format'.

Well, then you're out of luck. There is no format that can be played by
*any* computer out of the box.

You should be right with .wav on Windows computers, but Macs are more
geared towards AIFF. With Linux/Unix it depends on the flavour, but both
of those might be supported or neither.

However wav and aiff are *very* big files -- in the region of ten to
fifteen times the size of a medium-quality OGG Vorbis file.

Your best bet is probably to provide a few different options.

 

[John Latter]

Well, then you're out of luck. There is no format that can be played by
*any* computer out of the box.

You should be right with .wav on Windows computers, but Macs are more
geared towards AIFF. With Linux/Unix it depends on the flavour, but both
of those might be supported or neither.

However wav and aiff are *very* big files -- in the region of ten to
fifteen times the size of a medium-quality OGG Vorbis file.

Your best bet is probably to provide a few different options.

'sigh' I'll just fudge it then - "If your computer can play mp3 then
click here to listen to a welcome message"
--

John Latter

The 'Socially Acceptable Violence' website:
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/sac.html

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html