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RealAudio
Home » HTML » Getting Started
 RealAudio
Up until now, RealAudio was a format that was difficult to come by because you needed to run it off of a special RealAudio server. Now, with the release of the 3.0 player, it's possible to run RealAudio files off of an HTTP server.
The process of RealAudio was explained to me by two different Internet server tech people. (These guys know words that don't exist in any language). After they explained for a good 15 minutes, they stopped, noticed I had completely glazed over, and decided to give it to me in simple terms. Note that the process is much more involved than this, but here's the general idea...
If you put a sound on your WWW page, say a .wav or a midi. You are using what is known as a "helper application" or a "plug in." Either way - you are calling on another piece of software other than the browser itself to play the sound. The problem with that was that it took some time because the entire file has to download - then be loaded into the helper application - then it could play. Depending on download speeds, net congestion, file size, and your modem speed, this could take a long long time.
Where RealAudio beat them all was that it played the sounds almost instantaneously. It amazed me the first time I heard it and saw it work. If you did what I did, you went to the RealAudio site, didn't bother to read any of the documentation, grabbed the RealAudio converter, and placed a few files on your server. Mine didn't work either.
The reason it didn't work was because of downloading time and pace. For example, if you download an image file and sit there watching the numbers tick by in the status bar of your browser, you'll notice that the numbers are by no means consistent. You get a burst of data here and there, but there are also down times. You have to remember that you are not the only person being serviced by the system and that other people need the file too. That's the down time - while others are being helped.
RealAudio works by creating a buffer, or specific connection
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0.0(out of 5)