I have decided to use RealAudio as my audio file type of choice. The reason I have chosen RealAudio is because it provides decent sound quality while keeping file sizes to a minimum. For you, this means that download times should be faster than with a corresponding .wav or .au file. For me, this means that I can put up many more audio clips.

Real Player

In order to play the RealAudio files on my page you will have to have the RealPlayer available free from RealNetworks. RealPlayer is not a plugin. It will work as a "helper application" with any web browser. If you do not have RealPlayer version 3 or above, then head over to RealNetworks (www.real.com) and get a copy.

Play Options

download

will download the whole clip to your hard drive. After it downloads you can play it with RealPlayer. This is a good choice if you either want to keep the clip around for a while, or if your computer doesn't have enough RAM to run RealPlayer and your web browser at the same time.

play

will download only a small text file to your hard drive, and then it should launch RealPlayer and automatically start playing the audio clip as information arrives to RealPlayer over the internet. This is a good choice if you just want to hear the clip once, or if you want to hear it without waiting for the whole thing to download. Please note that the audio clip will not be saved to your hard disk this way.