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Playing Audio on the Superhighway
ne of the great things about the Web is our ability to exchange information freely and to all those who wish to use it. In my mind, the Internet took a giant leap forward once someone figured out how to exchange audio and video as well as still pictures and text. It's like the leap that was taken from newspaper to radio and then television. Amazing.

As you probably well know, it's very possible to use audio effectively on the web. I'm not talking about those annoying home pages with the Love Boat theme that alerts your boss to the fact that you're not working on next year's budget. I'm talking about uses that enhance the experience and add valuable content. For example, pages that use audio to enhance language-learning resources. Similarly, Web pages about birds might include clips of their calls. Or, as you might know from visiting sites like iTunes and Amazon.com, audio can be used to give prospective music buyers a sample of music tracks on a CD.

So, what are the major sound file formats? There are many different sound file formats which can, in theory, be used on the Web. However, before a user can play a downloaded sound file, they must have the appropriate software that will read that format on their computer (either as a separate "helper application" or as a "plug-in" for their browser). So, it makes sense to use an audio format that can be accessed (with the least amount of headaches) by site visitors. Here's a few popular formats to consider:

• WAV (.wav) Waveform sound was originally developed for use with Microsoft Windows. If you have a Windows PC with a sound card, you will probably already have software which enables you to record and listen to files in this format.

• MIDI (.mid) Musical Instrument Digital Interface format, is an electronic digital music format, which can be produced by computers, electronic keyboards and synthesizers. Most clips of "background music" on the Web are in MIDI format. They don't have spoken words in them because they're electronically produced.

• AU (.au) Sun Audio format, originally designed for use on Sun UNIX systems. This format has been around for awhile but is not as common or popular as others.

• AIFF (.aiff) Audio Interchange format, originally developed by Apple Macintosh for music and high quality sound.

• MP3 (.mp3) The latest craze and rightly so. This format is based on the earlier MPEG format and allows for clear transmission of audio in a compressed format. This allows for faster downloads over the Internet. One can also transfer MP3 files to portable players and play the files away from a computer.

• RA (.ra) Real Audio is a format for supplying "streaming" audio over the Web. This means that the user's computer can begin playing the sound file as soon as the first few packets of information are received. The user does not have to wait for the entire sound file to be downloaded before it can be played. This makes Real Audio suitable for long passages of sound information over the Web. Several sites have used this technology to create a form of on-demand "Internet radio" that many people can listen to regardless of their connection speed.

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