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Posted

The WMA version is incredibly loud, and for only 1 mb you got the whole 6 minute song in there. That's pretty impressive :lol:

 

For some reason it didn't stream to my Windows Media Player, though. It downloaded to a temp folder and opened in Winamp. I must have some strange file associations or something...

 

Whatever we pick, it's gonna be great :D :D :D :D

 

Edit: what about ASF (advanced streaming format)? That's what Redeye Records use for their audio clips, and it seems to work well. Something else to consider I guess :lol:

Posted

Won't streaming it save you a lot of server space, Tarzan? Maybe I have it backward, but I thought that streaming audio files were smaller.

 

I think the way Redeye Records does it is damn good, I doubt anyone, modem and high-bandwidth users alike, has any complaints about their soundclips, and as I said before, those are streaming ASFs.

 

Decisions decisions, eh? :wink:

Posted

ok i have loads to say on this subject so where do i start.

 

First up: finding clips for tunes is NOT, on the whole, a problem. I know that i could knock up ("at the touch of a button") several thousand clips for the site.... i repeat, getting the audio is not a problem...

 

...the problem is hosting it. There are currently 35000+ tracks in the database ... this means that a complete clip collection (at 150Kb per clip) will take up about 5Gbs of disk space, and the amount of people listening to audio will mean that tarzan will have to find some way of raising the money to stay online and pay for the bandwidth used !!!! Either that or find a very generous donor !!

 

As for the file formats:

 

1) .asf is .wma under an older name. Microsoft renamed asf to wma when they improved it.

 

2) of all the formats listed, mp3 is the WORST at 32kbps. This is for several reasons.

 

2.1 - Mainly its because mp3 was designed to be good at HIGH bit rates, whereas wma and real were designed to be good at this bitrate.

 

2.2 - also there is the fact that Microsoft and Real have sunk much $$$ into introducing perceptual encodings and filters which mean that real and wma appeal more to the human ear than mp3... mp3 uses a psychoaccoustic encoding which is mostly specified by an ISO standard, whereas real and wma both use proprietary ones. Ok i know that's technical - just take my word for it!!

 

I would go for ogg. good quality, good size, and it's OPEN SOURCE so anyone will be able to use it, no matter what O/S or hardware (even PDAs and Mobile Phones :D)

 

on streaming vs downloadable:

 

there is absolutely no difference. when you make the audio files, you pick how big they're going to be. you can stream downloadle files and you can download streamable files. repeat: there is no difference.

Posted

hmm.. lemme respond to that.

 

i completely agree that getting clips is no problemo and that it will be the hosting that is keeping this up.

 

then... my favorite is ogg as well, mainly because of the fact that it is free, but that is what most encoders for audio formats are. but mainly because of the free patents (if fraunhofer ever gets in financial problems... well, beware :mrgreen:). about the quality, i think realplayer and windows media cheat a little, the volume of those is way higher than the others.

 

found a streaming server for ogg vorbis: icecast which like the format itself is completely free. although i does seem they only recently picked up the development of it. and uhm.. i could be wrong but for streaming a constant bitrate is needed as far as i know, and since ogg is mainly made for variable... not sure... have to read a bit on this subject.

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