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BEGINNERS' HAVEN
What do I need to do to hear sound on my computer?
Does any one audio player sound better than another?
How speech friendly is all this audio playback software?
[LINK] What is the best sound card? [LINK]
Where do I go for more help?
What do I need to do to hear sound on my computer?
There are two important things you need, the hardware and the
software. In terms of hardware, you need a fast enough computer to
cope with the demands of audio. A Pentium 133 would probably be the
absolute minimum for many programmes. You also need a sound card. It's
very hard to get a computer without one these days. If you don't have
one, any computer store will sell you one. If you would like to make
digital copies of your CD collection, you will need a CD ROM drive
that supports digital audio extraction, almost all modern ones do. Of
course, for making your own CDs, you'll need a CD recordable drive.
There is a wide range of software products for listening to audio. The
three most common audio players on the market are Microsoft's Windows
Media Player, a fairly modern version of which comes with Windows 98,
Nullsoft's Winamp which is a $10 shareware product, and the Real
networks Realplayer, which has a free version and a plus version for
$30.
If you want to listen to the full range of broadcasts on the Internet,
then eventually, you'll probably need all three of these players. No
doubt you've heard people talking about MP3, Realaudio, and perhaps
Windows Media. These are all different ways of delivering sound over
your PC, either with files stored on your hard disk or via the
Internet. While all three programmes will play most of these formats,
they each have the latest and greatest version of their own special
formats. For example, Windows Media Player won't play the very latest
Realaudio files or Shoutcast streams, Realaudio won't play Windows
Media or Shoutcast streams, and Winamp, while it can play the latest
Realaudio files and Shoutcast streams, seems to have trouble with some
Windows Media files. If you're just starting though, and you have
Windows 98, the Windows Media Player will play a large number of file
formats. Eventually, you should look at getting Winamp and the
Realplayer.
Does any one audio player sound better than another?
The sound can depend on the way in which the file was created, and the
format used EG MP3 or Realaudio. If you're listening to a file being
played to you in real time from a web site or Internet radio station,
and you have a modem, don't expect to get CD quality sound. To deliver
real time sound over a modem, the audio has to be compressed so that
it's small enough to be downloaded by your modem with sufficient speed
that you can hear it without the sound stopping and starting. The
different file formats all have their strengths, weaknesses, and
unique characteristics introduced by the compression. Some of us who
listen to far too much Internet audio can immediately tell by the
sound whether they're listening to streaming MP3, Windows media, or
Realaudio. People with cable modems or DSL can hear CD quality sound
over the Internet, but only if a stream is available in a higher
bandwidth. In other words, if an Internet radio station is
broadcasting to listeners who have 28.8K modems, DSL or cable won't
make that stream sound any better, but users of this technology will
be able to play higher quality streams which will not be listenable by
modem users. CD quality sound is possible when playing files locally
on your PC if they have been recorded and encoded correctly.
This is not to say that the particular player you choose can't make a
difference to how good a file sounds. Winamp and the Real Player Plus
G2 offer a graphical equaliser. This can make a difference to the
quality of the sound. Nullsoft have also put considerable work into
their MP3 decoding engine, so if you have good speakers, you will hear
that MP3 files sound best with Winamp. However, even if you download
the Realaudio plug-in for Winamp, you will notice that at this time,
Realmedia files when played with Winamp don't get processed through
the Winamp Graphical equaliser, so the Realplayer is probably your
best bet for getting the best sound from Realmedia files.
How speech friendly is all this audio playback software?
It's incredibly variable. Actually, all of the big three are pretty
good, but there certainly are some players that have nice features but
are hopeless with screen readers. Winamp has an unusual interface, but
once you know what you're doing, it's very speech friendly just like
the other two.
What is the best Sound Card?
The best sound card, in terms of sound quality and features, probably
exceeds most of our budgets. What you need to decide is how much
you're willing to spend and what features you want. One factor which
may come into play is whether you want or need a sound card that can
play more than one sound through the wave device at a time. This may
be particularly important to you if you are currently using, or plan
to use, a software speech synthesiser such as the Keynote Gold
Multimedia, Dectalk Access 32, Flextalk, Eloquence, and the Microsoft
Speech Engine. Many users have been frustrated because if their
synthesiser talks at exactly the same time as a sound from their
computer starts to play, the synthesiser may prevent the sound from
playing on certain sound cards. It can work the other way as well. For
instance, you can be prevented from hearing an important message from
your speech synthesiser because a programme that plays audio over the
sound card has taken control.
What's happening here is that there are two programmes fighting for a
single output source from your sound card. Whichever gets there first
will have the upper hand, and completely prevent the other application
from speaking.
It is also worth pointing out that a sound card that handles multiple
wave devices may be useful even if you don't use, and don't ever plan
on using, software speech. However, with more programmes now using a
new standard from Microsoft called DirectX, which facilitates the
sharing of sound resources, this is becoming less of an issue for
non-software speech users.
Note that just because your computer can play an audio CD while you
use software speech, it does not mean that you are equipped to handle
multiple wave sounds. The CD source uses a different circuit in the
sound card.
If you feel you want a card that handles multiple wave sessions, there
are a number of choices, in particular from Creative labs, Yamaha and
Turtle Beach. However, if you have Windows 98, you are more likely to
find that your old sound card handles multiple wave sessions. Many
people have reported that sound cards that could only support one wave
session at a time suddenly supported multiple wave sessions under
Windows 98. By all accounts, this has to do with a software feature in
some of the new Windows 98 sound drivers. Some particularly cheap
cards have suddenly come to life under 98.
Where do I go for more help?
This site is full of hints, tips, reviews, links and downloads. Feel
free to explore it, and make sure you visit regularly as it is updated
often. You can also be kept up-to-date with additions to the site by
joining the HearToday.com Mailing List.
If you'd like to discuss things with people who are happy to share
their knowledge, then feel free to join the PC-audio list. This is a
great community of people who will be only too happy to help.
VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask] In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html
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