[thelist] RE: [theist] Here's One: Background Music

[Jonathan_A_McPherson at rl.gov]

Gina,

If you want to be cross-browser, you are indeed stuck with MIDI files. MIDI
files (.mid, .rmi) don't contain actual sounds -- they contain sequencer
commands that are "rendered" by the machine's sound hardware. Unless you
have an expensive sound card, MIDI files generally sound incomparably cheesy
and are despised by the browsing public, who, if they're anything like me,
head right to their software mixers to mute the MIDI channel as soon as some
page decides to play MIDI. MIDI cannot contain human voices and there's no
good way to turn an MP3 or other digital audio file into one.

I would actually avoid using background music on a page at all, because
musical tastes vary widely, and the odds are bad that the user's match your
client's -- and most users don't know how to turn it off if it annoys them
without turning of their sound entirely. I'd embed the music in your page so
that a mini-player appears, so users can decide whether they want to hear
it. Or, better yet, just offer it as a download for those interested. Most
modern browsers will handle such a download very nicely.

Any digital audio you as a background sound is also going to cause a
headache for modem users, because even a short audio file can easily be a
megabyte, and that's a Web-eternity over a modem line. Are you shooting for
"ambient" music? You could conceivably make a reasonably short MP3 or WMA
file that sounded nice when looped. (Many Flash sites do that.)

All that said, what you want to do can be done pretty easily:

<bgsound src="url_to_your_sound_file.mp3">

(or .wma or whatever).

In short, I'd steer away from downloading an entire song unless the user
does something to indicate they want to hear it, and offering them some way
to stop the music, once started. Many have suggested using Flash to control
it, which is a Good Idea.

--
Jonathan McPherson, LMIT/SD&I
Software Engineer & Web Systems Analyst
email / jonathan_a_mcpherson at rl dot gov
phone / 509.373.0150





-----Original Message-----
From: Gina K. Anderson [mailto:gina at sitediva.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 11:17 AM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: [thelist] Here's One: Background Music


Fellow evolters,

Okay, I have a head-scratcher here concerning background music. It's been
*years* since I've put bg music on a page, but this site calls for it and I
need
some help.

It's a Christian music site, and the client wants to load a different bg
music
monthly--no biggie (going to use an ASP solution, loading new image or text
monthly too)---but how on earth do I get it from a CD to a background music
file? I know how to rip a cd song to like an mp3 or wav, windows media,
etc--but
in order to have these files as bg music on a site, you'd need the plug in,
correct? You need a .midi for no plug-ins cross browser, right?? But isn't
.midi
file a synthesized music file? Or can I use mp3's somehow now?

Obviously, I'm lost on this one--if you were doing this, how would you
handle
it? I really don't want to resort to plug-ins, I'd rather the music 'just
play'
no matter what. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Gina
(The Lost One)