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Activity 3.9 - Some Sounds - edited WAV

If you do not have the QuickTime plugin installed it may be downloaded here. If you hear all four sounds play when the page initially loads the probable reason is that your QuickTime and/or browser preferences are set to play automatically when a page loads. The individual sound files may be played using the controller.

3.9 Part A - Sound

'I am OK' - my first attempt using Audacity! a 20k WAV file.

An enhanced version, @ 36k WAV

3.9 Part B - Haiku reading

As a 188k WAV file

The same as a QuickTime reference movie @ 8k

What I have learned: Trial by (t)error in Fireworks was kid's stuff compared to the can of worms opened here with audio. As an innocent in the land of clefs and Accidental Tools, Melody Assistant is somewhat daunting and an evening of my life seemed quite enough for me to appreciate the potential and even create a tune but know we were not meant for each other.

Audacity is highly recommended by the (SA) Technology School of the Future (TSoF) as it is a powerful, agnostic and free sound editing program. The concise tutorial on the TSoF site was helpful. Importing and editing the file was fairly straightforward and I finished with a 20k WAV file. As there was room to spare I enhanced it with a copyright free clip imported from the web from a Stonewashed link which proved a very useful source.

For the haiku I experimented with Garage Band which is most impressive for novice and muso alike. I was able to record the haiku though the results included some scratchy background sounds, possibly because of the cheap microphone. With more time these may have been able to be removed using filters in Audacity. It was easy to assemble the original background music by dragging several instrumental clips into the timeline, and then adjust fade in and fade out. The resultant Garage Band file of 4.8 meg was exported to iTunes as an AIFF of 4 meg.

The file compression 'answer to the maiden's prayer' seems to be QuickTime Pro 7 which justified the $45 reg. fee within a few hours. It turned the 4 meg AIFF into a 188k WAV, well under the specifications, and finessed with another 8k mov file of the same sound quality. Not bad from a 4.8 meg start! - However, since writing this I have found the reference mov. is just a a reference - it requires the original files to be stored somewhere accessible - on the server in this case. However, this would allow the page itself to load quicker so can still be very useful, particularly if the mov was to be made available on a number of pages.

A remaining problem is to stop the sound files all playing on loadup, even though this is a special case, ie, it would probably be unusual to have more than one on a page. The issue seems related to users browser settings, hence the note at the top of the page. However, it warrants further investigation.