Which RealTime Audio Player Should I Use?
These are the opinions of the guy who put this site together and had
to deal with most of the players available. If your company has a player
they would like to submit, or a discrepancy with this review, you can click
the Scalar Wave Systems Logo at the bottom of every page.
What's the Best Player?
Internet Wave
(Iwave) has the most high end, good clarity, and the most informative
and visual interface. You can see the data coming in, and it clearly tells
you what it's up to, and most importantly, (for those slow connections)
how the full streaming buffer is doing. on a slow night, Iwave will stop
the music when the buffer fully empties, then refill it and play with the
least amount of chopping.
RealAudio2
(RA) sound contains backround distortion especially with more subtle
types of music. The high end is better than TrueSpeech (RA 14.4)
but this also make the artifacts very obvious. There is no indication of
net speed, or when it will start chopping until it's too late, then
you will get an error message.
TrueSpeech
(TS) presently only supports the highest compression-lowest
quality sample rate of 8Khz across the Net. Little known fact: DSP TrueSpeech
is built into Win95 Sound Recorder. TrueSpeech also gives an indication
of how your buffer is doing (all important for having continuous music).
The sound quality however contains much distortion, very little high end,
and considerable artifacts. This is mostly due to the fact that the sound
file is the smallest of all these. On marginal connections, It is prone
to chopping as well. Little known fact: DSP TrueSpeech is built into
Win95 Sound Recorder. However you must download a free player in order
to listen to TrueSpeech in Realtime, over the net.
VoxWare
was not evaluated, due to the fact that my Windows95 Player locks Netscape
up with an endless noise-stutter when hitting any site with VoxWare
inline. Netscape goes into an endless loop, the soundcard clacks incessantly...a
most inelegant way to crash.
This is partly due to in innovation that lets VoxWare talk to you
automatically. It runs a lower sample rate than some of the good
sound cards will handle, (My SB 16 works fine). This is what kept
TrueSpeech out of the running for awhile, until they supplied a player
that supports the 11Khz standard sample rate.
Also, the Windows3.1 Version is not available presently.
What's the Best Audio to Put on My Server?
If you want continuous streaming voice, RealAudio is the way to go.
Once you have setup the remote RealAudio Server, bandwidth on your site
is lessened, this might be necessary if you get lots of hits and the soundfiles
are long. If you want to deliver music that has lots of prescence, i.e.
chorusing, sibillant echoes, and reverb, RealAudio's algorithms will
introduce a backround full of artifacts that the musician never intended.
The best sound quality again is Iwave 28.8 which won't hack your soundfile
up as bad. All of the players make large compromises and sacrifices
in sound quality order to make it even possible to get RealTime Audio over
the net.
The Iwave Encoder automatically generates it's own stub files for Realtime
playing while downloading on the Web. TrueSpeech requires a stubfile which
must be made by hand. RealAudio uses no stubfile, but this is one of the
reasons that make it necessary to procure an RealAudio Server to store
the sound files, and play them on request.
Both Iwave and True Speech will play directly off a standard Internet
Server. TrueSpeech is the only one that requires no special Server
setup (of those tested). IWave and RealAudio require two MIME type designations
which must be declared on the Server end before it will play into a Browser
in RealTime.
Real Audio is a whole different animal to set up. It MUST have an additional
program that usually has to be running on the Server*, Your Internet
Provider has to willing to run it. Or else you must go find a RealAudio
Server. *There is an exception, but the Personal Server software must be
running on a computer connected to the net. In addition, the MIME types
must be configured on the Server as well. RealAudio IS however well suited
for busy sites and mass broadcasting, because of the Server sharing architecture
and packet splitting technology.
I hope this has been some of some help to you...
Sound can add such an extra dimension to an experience!
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