Media Music Blog

I have been asked a number of times how you loop mp3’s using flash.

Mp3’s have a portion of header information in the file that prevents seamless looping. Given that mp3 can be compressed to a number of qualities reducing the file size it is highly usable online and in flash.

So, how do you get round that looping problem?

I have often wondered myself and thankfully I stumbled across Jeff Fulton who expertly explains the techniques in his blog

Check it out http://www.8bitrocket.com/newsdisplay.aspx?newspage=3153

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Love it or Loathe it, websites are becoming more media focused and music is becoming more common on the web. As broadband speeds increase, the web is becoming alive with the sound of music, glossy images and streaming video. Welcome to the online future!

Tip 1 – Enhance it!

Have music or sound if you feel it will enhance your users’ experience. Good music placement can enhance a visitors experience and provide the right atmosphere for browsing and purchasing. Don’t use music for the sake of it or because you mates band has produced a recording!

Tip 2 – The Off Button

Always, always have an off button in a highly visible place. Not everybody wants music, especially if they are at work. People are more likely to mute the music if it is inappropriate to the site subject matter.

Tip 3 – Be Legal

Always get the appropriate licensing, without it you could end up in serious trouble. Don’t assume that you are covered always check the small print.

Tip 4 – Audio

Use quality digital audio. Don’t use midi based music, this is now seen as old fashioned and the resulting sound quality is out of your control as it is dependent on the quality of the visitors sound card.

Tip 5 – Compliment Your Site

Music that is complimentary to the subject of your site or business is likely to be accepted by your visitor. Instrumental music is said to be best as vocals can be distracting if you are trying to read. Don’t use inappropriate music, better to use none at all than use a piece that is potentially turning your visitors away.

Tip 6 – Don’t Start Too Loud

Consider the volume and structure of the music. If the music starts off loud and dramatically, it is an idea to reduce the overall volume of the audio file. This way the music will play slightly lower than the default volume settings of the visitors system. Loud starts can cause people to scramble for the close button. It is better that they have to turn it up a bit!

Tip 7 – Ease Me In!

Letting music fade in is a good way to ease you listener into your audio. They will be less likely to hit the off button if you give them a few seconds to accept the fact that music is starting to play.

Tip 8 – What Is It For?

Decide what the intended effect of the music is. Is it an introduction to your site or as background music? May be you will have both.

Tip 9 – Loops Can Make You Loopy!

If you want to loop sections of music be very careful. Short loops are proven to irritate listeners quickly. The ear is very perceptive to repetition and trickery, more so than the eye.

Tip 10 – Don’t Employ the Butcher

Combining music with graphics and video is now relatively easy to do with modern technology, however, without good audio editing skills getting the audio to fit with your animation can require some sound design or a bespoke piece to be written. This subject is an article in its self; however, I would say it is better to pay for the skills of a sound designer to get the result you need. Music that has been butchered or altered to fit can easily be spotted if it is not done properly and can spoil the entire effect.

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Unfortunately, explaining this subject even in basic terms requires some techno babble. I guess after reading this you will either want more detailed information or you will be reaching for the headache tablets and going for a lie down!

If you are just trying to understand the best format to use for your project I guess understanding the reason behind the sound is less important than the result. If you fall into this camp you may want to quickly read this article, listen to the examples at the end of the article and then experiment with some audio files.

CD Quality Audio – Uncompressed.

The technical bit!

In order to reproduce a digital sound accurately many measurements of that sound are required and need to be stored as digital information (0’s and 1’s). Simplistically speaking, the more measurements or samples taken per second of a sound, the higher the quality that can be reproduced.

It is generally considered that CDs reproduce high quality audio, a quality of 44.1kHz 16bit.

This means audio is sampled 44100 times per second at a bit rate of 16. Bit rate refers to the quantisation or in simple terms the accuracy of each measurement taken. For example, leaving the standard of the CD for a moment, if you were to listen to something sampled at 8 bit it world sound grainy as the low accuracy of the samples would produce audible distortion. Going the other way, 24 bit would sound finer than a CD at 16 bit as the sampling accuracies are higher.

Anyway back to the CD, the size of a music file is quite large, however, this is fine as the CD has much storage space relatively speaking. The capacity of an audio CD is up to 80 minutes of CD quality audio (44.1 Khz, 16 bit)

CD audio, as you would buy in a shop and play on your CD player is known as uncompressed audio. Uncompressed formats are AIFF (mac), WAV (PC) and CDDA (CD Audio)

Compressed Audio

Pure uncompressed audio is great to listen to, however, high quality means large file size! Whilst this is fine on your CD player it is impractical for online use or for use on many of the popular portable media devices such as the ipod.

For this reason, compressed audio formats are used. A compressed format uses code that removes unnecessary information from the audio making the file size many times smaller than uncompressed audio files. There are a number of different compressed file formats, some better than others. The basic principle is that the information about sounds that cannot be heard (sounds obscured by others) is removed to save space.

Probably the most common compressed format is mp3. There are numerous others including WMA, AAC, Ogg vorbis and Real Audio.

A good quality mp3 is about 10% of the size of the comparative CD audio file. MP3 converters enable you to adjust the quality to suit the file size you require. With MP3 it is the bit rate that controls the file size and the auible quality. As MP3s are much smaller than CDDA files the bit rate is measured in kbps.

Generally speaking, If you want a small file size you can save it as a low quality audio file. High quality audio mp3s mean a larger file size. See our chart and examples below.

Format and Size VS Download speed.

So what does this mean to our ears, our storage space and our download speeds? Generally, small file sizes equal poor audio quality but quick download speed, whereas high quality audio means bigger files and a slower download time. The chart gives some examples of download speeds. You can also see how long they take to fully download into the flash player.

Sound quality is subjective so it is worth experimenting with different file sizes in order to see which is most suited to your purpose.

Have a listen to our MP3 examples, see if you can hear the difference. Whether you can hear any diiference will depend on how good your ears are and how good your speakers are.

Converting Audio

It is common practice to make larger files such as WAVs smaller in order to use them in streaming web media and numerous other multimedia projects. This involves converting them into compressed files such as mp3s and there is plenty of software out there that will do the job, however, I can personally recommend DB Power amp It is easy to use and free although there is a small license fee for MP3 conversion.

As a rule of thumb, it is never good practice to turn a compressed file back into an uncompressed format. Once the compression process removes information it can never be added back into the file. Also, it is not worth making a low quality MP3 into a higher quality one, the same principle applies.

The audio examples are on Media Music Now - Click Here >

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