Sound Files at Studio Dust

Studio Dust Palace uses three types of sound files (WAV, MP3 and RealAudio) in its Featured Performer and other rooms as well as MIDI music files. This page describes a little about these file types and how they are handled on the various Palace platforms - Windows Client, Macintosh Client and the Palace Viewer.


WAV	Plays Directly in Palace	Plays Directly in Palace	Not Available
MP3	Plays in Palace with Codec	MP3 Player via Internet Config	MP3 Player via WEB Browser
REAL AUDIO	Real Audio Player via WEB Browser	Real Audio Player via WEB Browser	Real Audio Player via WEB Browser
MIDI	Plays Directly in Palace	MIDI Player via Internet Config	MIDI Player via WEB Browser

The basic methods of handling the different sound file types on each Palace Client is shown above. The following describes the sound file types and more detail about how they are used in the Palace.

WAV Files

Both the Windows and Macintosh play WAV files without any additional setup or software. This makes WAV files the primary choice for most uses of sound on the Palace. At the time of this writing, the Palace Viewer Java application does not play WAV files.
The WAV sound file format, developed by Miscrosoft and IBM, has become a popular standard. WAV files contain numeric samples of the actual sound that was recorded. The recorded sound can be sampled at various rates and the samples can be recorded as values of 8-bits or 16-bits in size. The files can also contain either mono (single channel) or stereo (2-channel) recordings. Generally, the higher the sample rate and the higher the sample size the better the quality of the sound that is played back. However, the more samples recorded and the larger each sample is, the larger the WAV file will be and the longer it will take to download.

For example, a 10-second sound recorded as 16-bit values at 44,100 samples per second (CD-qualtiy) would require a little more than 860 kilobytes to download - about 3 minutes on 56K modem with a good connection. The same sound recorded as 8-bit values at 11,025 kHz would only require about 107 Kbytes to download - roughly 21 seconds with a good modem connection.

O.K., enough with the math. Clearly compromise must be made between the quality of the sounds and time it takes to download the files. Since most computers have modest sound cards and speakers and. often, even more modest Internet connections, most of the WAV files used at Studio Dust favor quicker download over hi-fidelity. Also, you should avoid using 16-bit sample size because the Macintosh Palace client cannot play them.

The standard file name extension for this type of file is .wav. Although the stand-alone Palace clients for Windows and Macintosh assume assume this format for sounds, Studio Dust uses the .wav filename extension to help identify media files and so these files can be easily recognized and played outside of the Palace.

MP3 Files

MP3 files have become quite popular on the Internet because of their relatively small file size and high quality sound reproduction. A five-minute stereo song recorded at CD-qualtiy would require about 50 megabytes whereas the same song in MP3 format might only be 8 to 10 megabytes.
The term, MP3, is a shorthand for MPEG Audio Layer III files. MPEG stands for "Moving Picture Experts Group" which develops various standards for the encoding of motion pictures and their associated audio tracks. The encoding scheme for Layer III audio compression uses psycho-acoustic characteristics to remove "unimportant information" from the sampled audio. We can think of it as a form of magic! The result is that MP3 files provide very high quality audio for much less file size (and download time) as their uncompressed WAV counterparts - as much as one sixth the file size. You'd have to listen very closely to hear the difference between a CD-quality WAV file and the same music compressed using MPEG Layer III.

The MP3 files at Studio Dust are specially processed to have header information identifying them as RIFF/WAV files. This was done using a program developed by Studio Dust called RIFFMP3.

Having a RIFF/WAV header enables these files to play in the Palace Client on Windows using the Palace SOUND command if a special MPEG-Layer3 Audio Codec is installed. Please visit our Windows MP3 page to obtain and install this codec.

The Macintosh Palace Client interfaces with the Internet Config program to handle various multimedia files. The Palace SOUND commnad may be used to play MP3 files for Macintosh users. Please visit our Macintosh Media Help page for information on MP3 players and how to set up the Internet Config program to handle them.

For Palace Viewer users Studio Dust uses the NETGOTO command to have your WEB browser handle MP3 files. Make sure your WEB browser is configured with an MP3 player as the help-program for files with a .mp3 extension.

Note: because the Windows Palace Client is limited to playing just a little more than 1 megabyte of sound data, the RIFF headers for the special MP3 files specify that the data size is no larger than the limit. MP3 files that are longer than that will cut off before the end. For reference, an MP3 file with a sample rate of 48 Kbits per second will play about 3 minutes of music.

However, most normal MP3 and media programs ignore the RIFF header and will play these files in their entirety. Programs such as WinAmp, QuickTime Player (both Windows and Macintosh) and SoundApp are examples. One notable exception is the Microsoft Windows Media Player. Although it will play MP3 files with the RIFF header, it will only play the amount of data specified in the RIFF header and ignore the remaining MP3 data.

Real Audio Files

The Real Audio format was developed by Real.com. This format has also become a standard for Internet audio. It provides fair quality audio for low and medium speed connections and is very well suited for listening to examples of music. Another nice feature is it's streaming capability - playing the music while the file is downloading.
For all versions of the Palace Client, Studio Dust currently uses the NETGOTO command to have your WEB browser handle Real Audio files. Make sure you have at least the G2 version of the Real Audio player installed on your computer.

Midi Files

Midi files are not really sound files. Rather than storing recorded samples of sound they contain musical instructions and performance information. This computer version of a musical score is interpretted by a music synthesizer (such as a sound card or software synthesizer) to synthesize the sounds and perform the music.
For more information about Midi files and how they are used at Studio Dust Palace, please visit our midi page.