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Browser - Netscape/IE
Download - (28.8k) - 51 sec.
Author - Chris
White/Tobias Petersen
Author - V3 Redirect Services
Reviewed on December 24, 1998 @ 10:29
PM EST
By: Robert
Sound files. You either love them or you have nothing to do with them. Record Companies like sound files that are short. Their goal is to let you, the consumer, buy their albums. Ever since the internet became mainstream, there has been an on going debate as to having full-length song files.
They are are illegal. However a lot of fans do have full-length files. Record companies do not care about MIDI files, which sounds like a keyboard. They do care about formats that play the song itself: real audio files, wav., and MP3's. The deal here is not the songs themselves, but copyright issues. In short, if you wanted to post full-length song files on your website, you would have to pay a fee to the company. No one wants to do that.
The Graphics
This is probably so irrelevant to the page. This page is a sound page and a sound page only, so why are the graphics so important? Put it this way, this page mainly does reviews and the graphics/layout is somewhat important. You see, for every page, no matter how big or small, graphics are important. Navigation is more important. It has a very simplified, yet constructive and attractive layout. I would suggest having tables for the songs, though.
Sounds Network
There are plenty of sound files in this page. The things at the bottom all lead to one page, Oh The Guilt. There are several types of formats that this page has, they are:
MIDI files
Real Audio
MP3
VQF
MOD
This is a good thing. Clearly, this page offers a variety of formats. Thus each format is a different quality. I will discuss the advantages of each format later.
Formats
Format |
Total |
| MIDI | 126 |
| Real Audio | 68 |
| MP3 | 146 |
| VQF | 29 |
| MOD | 23 |
As you can tell from the table above, the MP3 format is the winner with 146. Followed by MIDI with 126.
MP3 vs. Real Audio
Confused about which one to get? There are many advantages and disadvantages to each. With MP3, you can download the song directly to your hard drive. Furthermore, it offers CD sound quality. However, most MP3 files (full length) can be anywhere from 1.5 megabytes to 5.0 megabytes. It all depends on the length and quality of the song.
With Real Audio, you still get the same great quality as MP3. However there are some things to keep in mind. First, you need to know if you are downloading the Real Audio directly to your hard drive or listening over a network. Now, if you download it onto your hard drive, then do not worry, it is pretty much the same as MP3's in that case. However, if you are listening over a network, you may experience lag and network difficulty. Depending on the traffic of listeners of that song, you could be waiting for more than 5 minutes. Downloading Real Audio files from a network can save hard drive space though, but downloading it to your hard drive generally is the same size as a regular MP3. It's your call...
VQF's
What are these things? These are MP3 files that are smaller and "sound better." You will need WinAmp 2.03 or higher to play this. Windows Media Player plays a lot of these formats, except some Real Audio formats.
Full Length Shows
Probably one of the sections on this page that made me really curious. Now, you will not be able to download the entire show per se, that would be outrageous. We would be talking about 25-60 MB here, and that would take more than a day and a half to download. But you do get the songs, and you can download any song you want from a show. Here are the shows currently:
- KAOS Radio Show
- 1987 party
- 1987 show
Now, I'm sure there will be more in the future. They did a good job getting the earlier shows in, however I would like to see some more later shows.
Conclusion
What can I say? This is a great page to go if you want to download some files. It's a great page, to say the least. I would like to see more Full Length shows and more of each type of file, but I must say I am deeply impressed.