HW: Love in Space clip

[Paul Mather]

On Sat, 5 Apr 1997, corwin wrote:

> Hi! Why you didn't try to use RealAudio for sound clips? It's of better
> quality and easier to load.

Actually, this depends.  Quality is satisfactory IFF your connection can
keep up with the stream, otherwise, you get lots of unpleasant dropouts
and weird audible effects (like phasing).  For example, I was trying to
listen to some Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys RealAudio samples on an
online record shop WWW site and experienced great difficulty maintaining
acceptable quality.  The modem pool line I got when I logged in was only a
14400 connection (not all of our modem pool lines have upgraded to 28800,
so what you get is a bit of a lottery when you connect).  Obviously, the
samples had been prepared under the assumption that the bit rate would be
that of a 28800 connection.  As a result, the RealAudio player had
difficulty maintaining sync with the incoming stream, giving rise to all
sorts of unpleasant audio artifacts.

Btw, RealAudio is comparable in quality to FM radio at best.  Because it
is a streaming technology, you must factor in the unpredictable nature of
available bandwidth whilst listening.  This is quite a factor when
connected via a modem; less so for ethernet and above.  My main beef
against RealAudio is that it is proprietary and fixated on PCs; if you're
not a WinDoze or Mac user, you're pretty much shafted.  At least I can get
MPEG software for the Digital Unix Alpha workstations I primarily use.  I
think the prevailing ethos with a lot of multimedia stuff coming out
nowadays is "if you're not using a PC, go to hell," despite there being
perfectly good international standards catering to multi-platform support.

Cheers,

Paul.

obGreatCD: Nektar, _Sunday Night at London Roundhouse_
obCrapCD: Nektar, _Magic is a Child_  (Obviously recorded by Nektar's
        evil twin, Rat Ken.  AVOID this at all costs, unless you
        actually *like* listening to material so cringeworthy it's
        even embarrassing to listen to via headphones... [IMHO!!];)
obSavingGrace: Both the above bought used at my local shop for $5 each.
        (And _Magic is a Child_ *does* in fact have one or two maybe
        decent tracks on it [hidden well away], truth be told.)