Multimedia text, sounds, and World Wide Wave Forms

Using text and sounds in websites can make it simple to disseminate knowledge and music to many people, including students in classroom settings. Once you learn the basics, you can have a do-it-yourself publicist, and a place to store and share information with people.

Text is the graphic representation of sound. On computers, a number is assigned to each letter on a typewriter. This binary code is recognized by the computer and translates the keystroke to a letter or number. The system is called ASCII. There are different types of ASCII including plaintext, RTF and HTML. HTML is the best one to use when creating webpages because it looks the best on the computer screen. There are also different kinds of fonts. These different kinds of fonts are monospaced, which occupy the same horizontal relationship from one letter to another, serif, which has ticks on the bottom of the lettters to help the reader, and sans serif, which does not have the ticks. There are also different font standards, including postscript fonts, which look good when printed, and truetype.

A minimal amount of understanding of sound is required for use in websites. Sounds, as we all know, are series of vibrations in the air. Analog recordings measure the voltage produced by the sound onto a recorder device. Digital recordings convert voltage changes into numbers for use by a computer on a website or itunes. The higher quality the sound, the more digital space it takes up. There are two kinds of formats used for sound: RAM, or random access memory, and AIFF, which is ideal for multimedia CDs. Apple makes something called quicktime that is an ideal multimedia tool for sharing video, audio, MIDI, text, and animations. These can be used in conjunction or separately, in any way, which makes Quicktime very flexible for music educators.

Compressing audio files is necessary to free up disc space on the computer to store many files. It is easier for people to download music if it is compressed, because it takes less time. File compression uses something called a codec to minimize file sizes. It does this by getting rid of redundant, barely perceptible, or imperceptible audio to make the file size smaller. A MP3 coder changes the audio file further to minimize the file space. It may be "lossy", or lose some parts of the audio when it is compressed. Embedding audio in a separate file is a good way to get music across without downloading the music to the users hard drive.