Re: FLASH: some advice for audio

[Marc Hoffman (Dart Frog Media)]

At 09:11 AM 9/28/99 , you wrote:

>for the last few months i took on a small non-profit as my pet project. they

>are a volunterr symphony and they have just released a limited run cd of

>their live concerts. i want to use flash to play short cuts from their cd.

>i took 30 secs of a few songs and i fattened them up a bit and exported them

>to 22/16 stereo. when i take them thru flash i can get these clips down to

>about 40k with mp3/8 mono compression. is that good? right now they sound

>great. should i have taken them down to 11/8 mono? will i lose much other

>than file size?



Best advice is to try it and use your ears. Resulting quality is partly 

dependent on the style of music. I imagine the client and intended audience 

are going to be pretty demanding, however. Another factor to consider is 

the time it will take to download these sounds. Use bandwidth profiler in 

Test Movie mode, plus your math skills,  to figure that out. Discuss with 

your client 1) what constitutes an acceptable wait time and 2) how to keep 

visitors entertained or distracted while the preload occurs, so they're not 

conscious of waiting for content.


You might also want to offer alternatives, such as a) highly compressed 

samples that stream with little or no wait, and b) downloadable MP3 or wav 

files for the connoisseurs who want their sound as good as possible and are 

willing to wait a few minutes per sample.




Marc Hoffman

marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com (mailto:marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com)

.

My Flash Portfolio: <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/sampler>

(featured in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn)


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