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Making the Best of Sound

Using sound in your web pages

[Back to web-o-crats assignment 3 page]

Welcome message (.wav, 500k)

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Know Your User (as well as you can)

Putting sound on your pages that your user can really use is the most important thing you can do. The more you know about them, the better you can choose sounds that are both pleasing and useful.

Make sure your sounds are relevant. Use voice when you can. Use music judiciously. What you like may actually insult or upset your users. Ask yourself these questions:

1. What pleases them?
2. What turns them off?
3. What are their technical considerations?

Vision impaired users certainly appreciate speech when they can get it, but again, speech requires the use of sound formats which produce very very large files. If one were to, say, read our introductory paragraph, it would make a *very* large file, causing an unreasonably long download time.

When identifying your user, you will need to make educated guesses. You cannot simply interview everyone who might use your page. It will always be a compromise.

Choose Your Technical Options Carefully

There are so many technical options available to deliver your sound that it's very easy to get lost in making your technical decisions.

Try to use the lowest sampling resolution possible. This will save a lot of disk space and download time.

The same welcome message, but this time sampled at about the same level as telephone quality.

First, look for a lowest common denominator. If you expect your readers to mostly have Netscape, and a later version of the software, then you can reasonably count on them using Netscape's plugins to hear your files.

Several file types are available, including .AU, .SND, .WAV, .RAM, .MID and many more. Each seems to require dedicated players. There are also audio servers like RealAudio and ShockWave, which serve sound over the net. Try and stay with what you expect your user to have.

Embedded sound may play just fine on some pages. The control panel can be incorporated logically into the page and such things as the volume can be set. However, this is a problem for many folks who don't have all the necessary plugins. The browser will prompt them each time they enter the page to find out if they want to download it - or at the very least, they must confirm the dialog box. Some browsers even put up separate boxes, each requiring confirmation, one asking about downloading the plugin, the other a security warning box.

Avoid Common Pitfalls

The most common pitfalls are:

1. Long download times
2. Obscure or inappropriate file types
3. Running music continuously, driving the user crazy
4. Violating copyright laws
5. Inappropriate sounds

An inappropriate sound

Dare to Try New Things (but always do it with a purpose)

Don't be afraid to try new things. Just always make your decisions in light of your users' needs.

• Try using small sampling sizes when creating the files. Make the tradeoff between sound quality and file size.
• Try voice recorded over some music to emphasize important points.
• Work with embedded sound to see if that gets your message across better than files the user has to select.