332 Chapter 19 – Audio on the WebBasic Digital Audio Concepts
Web Design in a Nutshell, eMatter Editionrecording. Once the hardware is added however, there are a number of good soft-
ware packages from Cakewalk and other companies to record and process audio
and MIDI.
QuickTime 3.0 (Mac and PC)
The first essential audio/video tool for all web designers or multimedia
producers on both Mac and PC is QuickTime 3.0. This is the first release of
QuickTime to be fully functional on Windows. QT 3.0 comes with the tools
for creating streaming video and audio for the Web. QuickTime supports
dozens of file formats and there are a number of new codecs that come with
QT that are ideal for the Internet (see Qcomp, next). QuickTime also comes
with a built-in software-only MIDI synthesizer. This synth includes hundreds
of instruments that can be used to make high-quality MIDI soundtracks that
take only a few kilobytes of space and sound the same on all Macs and PCs.
Best of all, QuickTime 3.0 is free from Apple (http://www.apple.com/quick-
time/). A professional version of QuickTime can be licensed for $29.95.
Qcomp, from Qdesign Corporation (Mac and PC)
The Qcomp audio compressor that comes free with QuickTime 3.0 is of
particular interest to web designers. Qcomp, from QDesign Corporation (http://
http://www.Qdesign.com/), is one of the best ways to put high-quality music on the
Web. CD-quality (16-bit, 44k) stereo audio files can be played in real time
when compressed with Q-comp, and they sound excellent compared with
other types of compression. Qcomp’s pro version, which lets you optimize
your files and speed up the process, is $399.
Peak, from Bias (Mac only)
The most versatile and fun audio-editing software on the Mac is called Peak,
from Bias (http://www.bias-inc.com/). Peak can do more things to an audio
file than you will ever need and outputs to most audio formats including
AIFF, WAV, QuickTime, and RealAudio.
Metro, from Cakewalk (Mac only)
For Mac users who want to record their own music a program from Cake-
walk called Metro (http://www.cakewalk.com/) will let you record as many
tracks of digital audio as your computer can handle. Metro also comes with a
very good MIDI sequencer. The MIDI and audio tracks can be processed,
edited, and mixed within Metro. This is a great package for less than $200.
Media Cleaner Pro, from Terran Interactive (Mac and PC)
One last package that is useful for optimizing audio and video files for the
web is Media Cleaner Pro from Terran Interactive (http://www.terran.com/).
This program is designed to get the best quality files at the smallest size in
whatever format you choose. MediaCleaner works all of the QuickTime
compressors as well as RealAudio and RealVideo. Media Cleaner also does
batch compressing. The program sells for $359 and is available bundled with
the Qcomp and Sorenson pro packages.Basic Digital Audio Concepts
In order to distribute recorded speech or music over the Internet, the analog audio
must be converted to a digital format (described by bits and bytes). This process is