How do I listen to audio files?

You need a special program installed on your computer called a media player, or audio player. Once you have one installed you can listen to audio files that you have on your computer. Some programs will even play sound files embedded in web pages.

If you do not have an audio player on your system, go to the Audio Tools page and select a program you can download and install on your system.

How do I download audio files from this site?

To the left of each audio file entry you will see a small musical note. Double click on this to bring up the preview box. Once the box is up and the audio file is playing, right click on the audio control panel and choose 'Save target as..." or "Save as..".

This will save the file to your hard drive. Make sure you take note of which folder you have saved it to so you can find it when you want to hear the file later.

How come nothing happens when I right-click on the audio control panel?

First, make sure you are clicking on the little audio control panel and not somewhere else in the preview box. Once the file is playing put your mouse over the 'Play' button and right-click. Normally you should see a little menu popup with a Save As or Save Target As option available. Left click on that option to save the file.

This can also be a problem associated with some browsers. Some audio plug-ins do not allow right clicking on the audio control panel, so you should download and install a plugin like Crescendo which seems to work just fine.

What's the difference between MIDI's, WAV's and AU files?

MIDI's, WAV's and AU's are all audio file formats. There are some differences though:

A MIDI file (a file that ends with the extension .mid) is essentially a small file with instructions that tell your sound card how to play a song. The better your sound card, the better it will sound. All of the actual playing is done on your computer. You cannot 'record' existing sounds with MIDI.

A WAV file (a file that ends with the extension .wav) is a digital recording of a sound or song. It is much like a cassette tape or cdrom. Because there is so much information contained in .wav's these files tend to be HUGE. (Long .wav's can be anywhere from 500k to 3 MEGS or more!)

An AU file is similar to a WAV file. It is used to record pre-existing sound, but records the sound in a more efficient format. AU files tend to be much smaller in size than WAV recordings of the same sound are. This is handy for using on web pages as background sounds when download time is a consideration.

How do I put a sound on my webpage?

Copy and paste the code below onto your webpage, and replace the "example.mid" filename with the filename of the audio clip you want to put on your page:

<EMBED SRC="example.mid" AUTOSTART="TRUE" LOOP="TRUE" WIDTH="145" HEIGHT="60" ALIGN="CENTER">
<NOEMBED>
<BGSOUND SRC="example.mid" LOOP="10">
</NOEMBED>
</EMBED>

For more information on adding sound files to webpages go to The HTML Clinic, an HTML tutorial site, and check out their excellent help pages.