Seven Ways to Warm Your Prospects Using Website Audio

Gone are the days when putting audio on your website consisted of subjecting your visitors to gaudy musical fanfares and various clich?d sound effects. Fortunately, audio has now become a lot more sophisticated and new techniques that allow audio to be streamed have made it possible to use your own voice as a highly effective marketing tool. Most visitors to your website will have computers with audio capabilities. Using your own voice, you can deepen the impact of your sales message and develop a stronger connection with your visitors. Many websites using streaming audio to promote and sell services claim that audio increases their conversion by as much as 300%! Why is audio such an effective marketing tool? It's simple really. It's a well-known fact in consumer psychology that the more senses you engage, the easier it is to communicate a message and motivate a sale. Senses evoke emotion and emotions are memorable. When it comes to surfing the Internet, the sense of hearing is far more powerful than the sense of sight. Internet surfers remember only 20% of what they read, but remember an amazing 70% of what they hear. Visitors respond to your voice in way that cannot be achieved with words alone, no matter how great your copy is. Audio's power comes from its ability to reinforce your message by engaging your visitor's most powerful senses. Listed below are some of the most powerful ways to use streaming audio on your website: Introductions: Use streaming audio to introduce yourself, your website and some of your key products or services to your visitors. Doing this removes some of the anonymity of the web experience and helps develop trust between your and your prospect. Testimonials: It's a proven fact that testimonials that include a photograph appear more credible to visitors that those with text only. Testimonials that include text, a photo AND an audio note are the next best thing to having satisfied customers call your visitors and tell them personally how great your products are! Assurances: Placing audio notes at important points in your website, such as order forms, or payment links, is an excellent way to reassure visitors about common concerns. Streaming audio can be use to explain the payment process, security issues, merchant account details and any other concerns visitors may have relating to your website. Instructions: Streaming audio buttons allow you to quickly provide instructions to visitors. A great example of this can be found at http://www.ezinearticles.com. An audio note that explains exactly what you must do to make a successful submission supports each step of the article submission process! Tips: Over 80% of web surfers will click on link offering a tip? Why? Because they know a tip is a short piece of useful information. Reading a tip is not like reading an instruction manual. It's a chance to gain some information quickly. Provide an audio tip on your site each day and you'll find people just can't get enough of pressing that play button! Teleconferences and Seminars : Streaming audio is a great way to provide your visitors with playback on seminars and teleconferences. Thanks You's: Create a streaming audio message to send in emails every time a client or prospect buys your product or service. Acknowledging a purchase personally is a fantastic way to build up customer loyalty and boost repeat sales. Finally, a brief word of caution! Audio is an effective tool when used responsibly. Don't hit your visitors with audio as soon as they arrive at your site. You never know where people are accessing from or what other sound may be running on their computers. I've read about visitors being really annoyed by audio that played without invitation because they were listening to CD's or were sitting in their workplace. It's important that visitors have control over the audio. A simple invitation to click is all it takes. You'll be surprised at how many people are driven by curiosity and will feel compelled to click the play button. Also take time to prepare your message well. Try to animate your voice and inject some personality into your message by being conversational rather than formal. Most important of all, be confident and be yourself! This article may be reproduced in its entirety only if unaltered and the resource box is included. Tracey Meagher is the founder of QuickandEasyAudio.com, a website that reviews all the latest resources and tools available for adding audio to your website. Visit <a target="_new" href="http://www.quickandeasyaudio.com">http://www.quickandeasyaudio.com</a> to receive free audio resources that will help you add audio to your website in less than 60 minutes!

wav; Recording Voice or Instruments

A graduate student in Belfast wrote to me about a project he was doing. It is an inter-active instructional CD on the Tin Whistle. Obviously here is another application where you would record direct to wav. and forget about the midi. format. He wanted an authentic sound and midi. would never provide this. You might get close, if you used the right sound card or plug-ins and I will go into this in more detail in later writings about midi. If you can play an instrument or sing, you will want to record directly to wav. The procedure is much the same as when you record a tape or L.P. The key element here is to use a very high quality microphone. Plug the microphone into the microphone input of your sound card which will be the one with the picture of a microphone on it. Find the software for your sound card, (try accessories, if your computer came with a sound card,) and select the microphone input from your options or file menu. You are all set. If you have a good sound card, it may have come with a few other features that are useful; If it has a mixer, set the level of your input so it doesn't go into the red. This is important to eliminate 'clipping,' when you record. 'Clipping' is an unpleasant sounding distortion from having the levels too high. Also, your sound card may have come with some effects processing. These effects must be used 'on the fly.' That means they are utilized while you record rather than applied to the recording later. Don't be intimidated by this. They are easy to use and a lot of fun. Most likely you should use some of these effects, if you want a more professional sounding recording. Find the effects in the software for your sound card. These are usually available in what are called 'presets.' This means they are already created for you and given a name, such as 'vocal chorus.' 'Chorus' is an often used effect for vocals. It gives vocals that rich 'singing in the shower' sound. Reverb and delay are also used to enhance the richness of the tone. Try some different effects out and select the one that you think sounds best and record with it. The sound card may even give you the option of mixing your own effects. This will simply require a bit more trial and error but can be very fun and worthwhile. If you want a really authentic sound of a folk instrument, you may not want any effects at all. Brian is a graduate of the Peabody School of Music. He has performed in many groups, was formerly the lead singer for The Jabberwocky and played at the Coach House in San Clemente in the opening act for Hunter S. Thompson. Hear his music at <a target="_new" href="http://www.dizzyobrian.com">http://www.dizzyobrian.com</a>

Why Arent You Using Audio?

As use of the Internet continues to grow geometrically, we see an increased demand for information to be provided by a variety of media. Viewing options can range from simple text to PDF documents to video clips. Unfortunately, each option requires more and more resources and technological know-how. As convergence moves inexorably forward, we have to ask ourselves if there is a practical way to combine the best of this technology and still provide the user with a satisfying Internet experience. The answer, at this stage of Internet evolution, is audio. Voice, by itself, provides the means to enhance a user's enjoyment of the Internet. Voice conveys many of the intangibles underlying the written word. A voice can touch the human spirit and deliver a message on its' own merits. Audio can build community and maintain relationships. Audio is the most mature of the streaming technologies and doesn't have the bandwidth requirements associated with video. Any Internet user connecting at 28.8k or better can enjoy FM quality sound without experiencing buffering and other annoyances that can affect video at lower bit rates. It is common knowledge that people only retain 20% of what they read, but they do remember 70% of what they see and hear. That fact in itself increases the value of an audio message delivered from a website for the typical user. And, the implications of how audio can increase Internet enjoyment for the handicapped are overwhelming. Streaming audio provides Internet businesses with unlimited opportunities to reach their audience and to simplify their interactions. Streaming audio broadens a product's appeal and helps to stimulate sales. People are comfortable with audio and have few qualms about using it in their day-to-day lives. Retailers can integrate audio into their operations in several ways. Use it to enhance product descriptions and deliver product information in ways far more persuasive than plain text. Booksellers can have &quot;special events&quot; that offer audio excerpts from selected titles. Art dealers can use voice to give value added information on an artist or a period of history depicted by an artist's work. (Think of those audio tours that museums offer.) Organizations that specialize in selling educational tools can use audio clips for potential clients to preview and evaluate the material being offered. The ability to sample the product is a potent and practical selling aid. Business-to-Business sites and corporate Intranets can also harness the power of audio. The need to provide up-to-the-minute information for employees and customers can be well served with streaming audio and the telephone. Integrating audio into the corporate communications mix is a tool that is easy to use and addresses the need to communicate with a distributed work force. In both the retail and business-to-business marketplace, audio can and should be used to maintain those all important customer relationships. Voice messages add a personal touch that intrigues the listener and encourages them to remain on the site. Employee training is greatly enhanced with audio. Use it to orient new employees and keep the information archived on the site for easy reference. Sales training can also be archived and quickly retrieved when needed. The ability to offer customized audio training materials on a 24/7 basis makes streaming audio a very versatile and efficient learning tool. Some words of caution are also necessary. Audio, just like any other value-added technology, has to be used judiciously. It should be employed for a specific purpose and to enhance the text based message being delivered. Think of your audience and how you'd like them to interact with your website. Keep in mind that your visitor may be coming to your site while they're at their place of business and plan accordingly. The future of streaming audio is bright and filled with promise. More and more Internet users have become familiar with streaming audio and use it everyday. Internet radio broadcasts are extremely popular and are now being employed as effective advertising vehicles. Audio e-mail messaging is becoming widely available and is being positioned as a practical business tool. Consumers are attaching audio messages to greeting cards and experimenting with Internet telephony. Streaming audio will allow the average Internet user the ability to create content that conveys the power of voice and the emotions that it conveys. So?why aren't you using audio? Ronni Rhodes is the owner of WBC Imaging, an Internet company that specializes in web site enhancement utilizing streaming media technology. With her husband, Don, a digital media engineer, they work with companies to incorporate streaming as part of successful and meaningful sales and marketing programs. Please direct all questions and comments to: <a href="mailto:Ronni@wbcimaging.com">Ronni@wbcimaging.com</a> 520-742-5780 <a target="_new" href="http://www.wbcimaging.com">http://www.wbcimaging.com</a>

Why Publishing MP3 Can Cost You A Fortune

This was news to me. It might be news to you too: MP3 is NOT free to use if you're an online publisher. BUT - let me be clear - there are some opt-outs. It appears you don't have to pay any license fees if: It's for personal use or non commercial reasons (not generating income). OR - if your company revenue is below $100,000 a year. Now, these rules might change of course. Make sure to check these yourself and ensure you're up to date by visiting mp3licensing.com for full details. However, when there's alternatives I don't see why anyone publishing audio online would want to or should publish in MP3 format. So what's the best alternative? Well - it's all about OGG. Okay, a slightly strange name. Here are the facts: OGG is just as high quality as MP3. OGG is just as quick to download as MP3. OGG is open source - this means no fees due, ever (for full details on OGG visit vorbis.com). The only current downside of OGG is that it isn't as widely supported by audio players as MP3. BUT - I'm convinced this will change. As more and more online publishers say "No!" to paying hefty and unnecessary licensing fees, more and more audio will be published online in OGG format, meaning more and more audio players will support OGG. So if you're currently publishing audio online in MP3 format, what does this mean for you? Well, my advice is to convert your audio from MP3 format to OGG format, without delay. Now I'll admit it can be a little bit time consuming, but once it's done, it's done. And would you rather make a little effort to convert your audio, or pay licensing fees year after year? So how do you convert MP3 to OGG? Easy - use an audio converter. You'll find a ton of high quality free ones by searching download.com and also sourceforge.net. My personal favorite is WinLAME (awful name, great software) from winlame.sourceforge.net. So use WinLAME to convert your MP3 to OGG. Pay attention to keeping the MP3 and OGG files around the same size (I've actually found OGG files to be slightly smaller). And then compare the audio quality. I'll be surprised if you can find any difference between them. Now this conversion process might take a while. For about six hours of audio it took my computer at least a couple of hours of processing time. But I just left the computer to it and came back when it was done. You can even leave this process running overnight if you have a lot of audio to convert. Now here's an extra snippet you need to pay attention to: Some OGG audio has "Tags". Tags are extra information inside the audio file which often includes the name of the song for example. At this time (this will probably change) some audio players have trouble playing OGG with "Tag" information in them. So take the tag information out. It's easy and doesn't affect the audio in any way - here's how you do it: Download "MP3Tag" from mp3tag.de/en/. Install the software, and start it up. Then just choose to "Remove All Tags" from your OGG files. This process takes literally two minutes but is very important. Now after you've converted and de-tagged the OGG audio, you'll need to upload it to your server of course. Then you'll have to change all your download links. This is fiddly, but needs to be done. For example - you would need to change all your links from: www.domain.com/folder/audio.mp3 To: www.domain.com/folder/audio.ogg Then test every download link to make sure it's working correctly. Important Note: Don't forget about the audio you've got in Zip files too. You'll need to recreate those Zip files with OGG audio instead of MP3 audio and re-upload them. If you're not sure where all the MP3 and Zip files are on your websites, here's an easy way to list them: Now, this only works on Unix-based servers (which covers Linux servers, FreeBSD...etc - ask your web host if you're not sure)... This is pretty advanced so don't do this if you're not comfortable with the process. Or ask your web host to do it for you if they're happy to do that: You need to Telnet into your server and then type the following: find . | grep mp3 > allmp3 Then type: find . | grep zip > allzip This will then give you two files on your server: allmp3 & allzip Download these files and take a look at them in a text editor. They'll show you the path of every MP3 and Zip file on your server so that you can quickly and easily find which files you need to convert to OGG. Dead handy. Okay - so after you've converted and uploaded the audio, you'll need to change the text around the download links. You'll need to take out any mention of "MP3" from your website. I don't suggest replacing it with "OGG" on a sales page for example since that will probably confuse people. Just replace "MP3" with "downloadable audio" or "high quality downloadable audio". And then on your download pages mention that the audio is in OGG format which is just as high quality as MP3 and just as quick to download. Then link to a couple of audio players that you know for a fact support OGG. The audio players I personally mention are Winamp from winamp.com and Quintessential Player from quinnware.com. Important Note About Winamp: As I write this only the Full version (not the Lite version) of Winamp supports OGG successfully. So make sure to tell your visitors to download and install that version. It's still free though so your visitors won't have to spend any extra money just to listen to your audio. And that's pretty much all the steps needed to convert your published audio from MP3 to OGG, which can save you a small fortune in licensing fees without compromising audio quality or speed of download. Louis Allport is the creator of over thirty (and counting) unique and high quality information products selling very successfully online. He is directly involved with every step of the product creation and marketing process including finding the market, creating the content, building the marketing process and materials, as well as developing consistent and qualified traffic streams. One of Louis' recent products reveals a proven four-step formula that can make creating best-selling online products a lot more predictable: <a target="_new" href="http://www.createoffers.com/new/">http://www.createoffers.com/new/</a>

Creating Web Content Using Audio Recordings of Expert Interviews

Creating Web Content Using Audio Recordings of Expert Interviews The easiest way to create content for your websites is also one of the best ways to create value for your clients. It's a wonderful technique that when used well can make a big difference to how professionally your work is perceived in the marketplace. One of the Biggest Mistakes You Can Make Doing Business Online is Trying to Be the Expert on Everything Many online business owners think that if they don't create their own content, they can't offer it or sell it. This is absolutely untrue. Moreover, if you don't get over this mental block, you will end by exhausting yourself and likely not completing many of your projects. Instead of getting stuck in this way, try using audio recording to create content quickly and relieve yourself of the pressure of having to do everything yourself. Find Experts on Your Topic and Interview Them "on the record." Send an email to 5 people you'd like to interview, inviting them to chat with you for 30-45 minutes by telephone. Do this as often as you like, but at minimum twice a year. Be sure to provide a few sentences about what you'd like to ask them and tell them what you're doing the interviews for. Let them know you'll be recording your interview so you can share their expertise with your online visitors. Most experts will find your invitation appealing because they have to do very little preparation, they don't have to travel, and it gives them added ongoing exposure to your network. It's a great way for them to reach lots of new people with little effort. There are Two Methods to Record Interviews: Use a Professional Service Or "Do-It-Yourself" Using a Professional Service There are different levels of service in the "audio recording" industry and lots of bells and whistles to choose from. At this point, to create an audio recording for your website visitors, all you will need is a way to put a link on your website in MP3 or RealAudio format. You won't need CD or cassette duplication, but you may wish to consider it down the road. Choose from the recommended services based on your budget and how much of the legwork you're willing to do on your own. Here are a couple of professional audio services - <A href="http://www.greatteleseminars.com">http://www.greatteleseminars.com</A> and <A href="http://www.audiostrategies.com">http://www.audiostrategies.com</A>. Doing it Yourself "Doing it yourself" has its benefits: You can record almost anything at the last minute without having to call a supplier. Over time, there are significant cost savings. And of course, becoming more technically savvy brings you a measure of independence that will add to your confidence as an online business entrepreneur. There is a learning curve that involves a time commitment, and requires about a US$200 investment to get you started. If you are at least somewhat technically capable, and plan to record more than 15-20 hours of audio in the next year, have a good look at the following resource on doing your own recordings. You will save money by doing it yourself. In fact, perhaps it's worthwhile hiring a virtual assistant to learn this for you. This article on how to record TeleClasses and create passive revenue is clear, detailed and quite technical: <A href="http://www.todayscoach.com/2002/0826/default.html">http://www.todayscoach.com/2002/0826/default.html</A>. It contains everything you need, including step-by-step screen shots, to get started recording interviews from your telephone in your very own office.<BR><BR>Consider this: Interviewing people "on the record" not only helps you add content to your current websites, it is also a tried-and-true way of creating a complete information product. Set up three people to interview in the next two weeks, then package the recordings into a quick and dirty information product for sale. If you make sure your interviews provide answers to a specific problem your clients experience, you'll have a winner. There's no reason why you can't open a brand new revenue stream just that quickly and simply. Andrea J. Lee coaches entrepreneurs and online business owners. As Thomas J. Leonard's General Manager, she helped build and manage the largest network and trainer of personal and business coaches in the world. Now the CEO of Andrea J. Lee Group of Companies, she writes, speaks and consults on Marketing, Internet and Business systems. For more helpful tips, visit <A target="_new" href="http://www.multiplestreamsofcoachingincome.com/join.html">http://www.multiplestreamsofcoachingincome.com/join.html</A>.

wav; Recording Voice or Instruments

A graduate student in Belfast wrote to me about a project he was doing. It is an inter-active instructional CD on the Tin Whistle. Obviously here is another application where you would record direct to wav. and forget about the midi. format. He wanted an authentic sound and midi. would never provide this. You might get close, if you used the right sound card or plug-ins and I will go into this in more detail in later writings about midi. If you can play an instrument or sing, you will want to record directly to wav. The procedure is much the same as when you record a tape or L.P. The key element here is to use a very high quality microphone. Plug the microphone into the microphone input of your sound card which will be the one with the picture of a microphone on it. Find the software for your sound card, (try accessories, if your computer came with a sound card,) and select the microphone input from your options or file menu. You are all set. If you have a good sound card, it may have come with a few other features that are useful; If it has a mixer, set the level of your input so it doesn't go into the red. This is important to eliminate 'clipping,' when you record. 'Clipping' is an unpleasant sounding distortion from having the levels too high. Also, your sound card may have come with some effects processing. These effects must be used 'on the fly.' That means they are utilized while you record rather than applied to the recording later. Don't be intimidated by this. They are easy to use and a lot of fun. Most likely you should use some of these effects, if you want a more professional sounding recording. Find the effects in the software for your sound card. These are usually available in what are called 'presets.' This means they are already created for you and given a name, such as 'vocal chorus.' 'Chorus' is an often used effect for vocals. It gives vocals that rich 'singing in the shower' sound. Reverb and delay are also used to enhance the richness of the tone. Try some different effects out and select the one that you think sounds best and record with it. The sound card may even give you the option of mixing your own effects. This will simply require a bit more trial and error but can be very fun and worthwhile. If you want a really authentic sound of a folk instrument, you may not want any effects at all. Brian is a graduate of the Peabody School of Music. He has performed in many groups, was formerly the lead singer for The Jabberwocky and played at the Coach House in San Clemente in the opening act for Hunter S. Thompson. Hear his music at <a target="_new" href="http://www.dizzyobrian.com">http://www.dizzyobrian.com</a>

How to Add Audio to Video

Digital media is everywhere you look. Music and video production have made it to the grass roots level thanks to the affordability and widespread use of powerful computers. Inexpensive digital video cameras are widely available, and older analog video cameras can be connected to a computer through a video card to download movies to the computer for editing, storage, and distribution to friends and relatives over the internet. It has become fairly easy to edit your own videos, and there are many software packages available aimed at the amateur. The Windows operating system has its own video editing package called Windows Movie Maker that allows you to produce professional-looking videos. As you explore this exciting new world, you will inevitably come up with the need to edit the audio portion of your video file. The sound quality of most video cameras is not great, so you may want to process the sound or replace it all together with music or voice-overs. It is very easy to separate the audio from the video. Free software packages that do this task include Windows Media Encoder from Microsoft (if you are working with WMV video files) and VirtualDub (if you are working with AVI files). Either of these programs (and many others) allow you to save the audio portion of video file quickly and easily. Once you have your audio file, you can process it for noise reduction, bring up the volume, add music or do any digital magic to it that you desire. With many video editing packages, however, it isn't necessary to split the audio to a separate file. Even simple packages like Windows Movie Maker have basic audio editing functions, and you can add separate music or voice tracks and mix all of them together. If you have a particular audio file that you would like to use in your video (maybe a special effect or a voice over that you have recorded separately) simply add that file to the list of media to be included in the video. Other media formats can be separate video files, picture files or graphics. The audio file can be placed anywhere on the time-line, and you can use the same file many times without requiring any extra storage space on your computer. For precise placement, zoom all the way into your timeline and place the audio exactly in sync with the video. That's it! You are well on your way to making professional-looking videos! Hans is editor of the <a target="_new" href="http://www.selected-audio-reviews.com/product-pages/Howto.htm">Audio Howto Section </a> of the <a target="_new" href="http://www.selected-audio-reviews.com/">Selected Audio Review Guide</a>

MP3 vs. WMA

There are just a few audio compression formats out there, just like there are only a few image compression formats (you may have heard of them: JPG, GIF, BMP). Two of the most popular audio formats are WMA, or Windows Media Audio, and MP3 (Short for MPEG, Moving Pictures Experts Group, Audio Layer 3). WMA is the older audio format, produced by Microsoft, to work with Microsoft's Windows media player. The WMA compression format was designed specifically for this format, and thus can not be converted to other audio formats. The audio quality of WMA and MP3 audio formats tends to be noticeably different. WMA is a decent quality audio format when streaming at phoneline speeds (maybe 30kbps or so). At such speed WMA almost reaches an FM level of audio quality, although not quite. At 128kbps, Microsoft claims the WMA is nearly CD-quality, although many would deny this. WMA, however, is not to be completely looked over. The compression provides relatively small audio files and they require less processing power to execute. It thus retains a deminishing niche as MP3 has become more popular and widely used. The MP3 audio compression was developed in Germany in 1991 by the Fraunhofer Institute. MP3 typically provides higher quality sound than WMA because it uses perceptual audio coding to compress CD-quality sound by a factor of 12. As a result, MP3 has become almost the universal standard among audio usage and broadcasting. It provides CD-quality sound at reasonable compression sizes and high streaming speeds. Watch out, however, at low bitrates, as MP3 quality will likely suffer. Bradley James is a senior editor at <a target="_new" href="http://www.scinet.cc">SciNet.cc</a>, a website containing many helpful consumer electronics review articles. For more information on MP3 and WMA audio formats, please visit our <a target="_new" href="http://www.scinet.cc/articles/wma-vs-mp3/wma-mp3.html">MP3 vs. WMA</a> webpage.

Eight Reasons Why You Must Add Audio to Your Website

NUMBER 1 : INTERNET USERS REMEMBER WHAT THEY HEAR<br> Did you know that Internet users remember only 20% of what they read while remembering an amazing 70% of what they hear? Audio on your website will help your message stay with fresh your visitors for longer. NUMBER 2 : AUDIO INCREASES SUBSCRIPTION RATES<br> Using audio to convey a personal message to entice visitors to subscribe to your newsletter will result in up to 400% more subscribers than using traditional subscription marketing methods. NUMBER 3 : AUDIO WILL KEEP VISITORS ON YOUR SITE FOR LONGER<br> Using audio on your website helps to keep visitors on your site for longer. The longer visitors stay the more informed they are about your product and services and the more likely they are to buy your product or service. NUMBER 4 : AUDIO ADDS CREDIBILITY TO YOUR WEBSITE<br> Adding your own voice to your website helps prospects identify with you personally, warming them to your products and services in a way that cannot be achieved by any other existing marketing technique and converting more prospects to buyers. NUMBER 5 : AUDIO PUTS YOU MILES AHEAD OF YOUR COMPETITORS<br> While your competitors still hang around in the dark ages of Internet marketing, placing audio on your website gives you an enormous competitive advantage. Visitors will trust you more than your competitors and trust is the number one vital ingredient for making visitors part with plastic. NUMBER 6 : AUDIO EHANCES EMAIL AND NEWSLETTER COMMUNICATIONS <br> Used in emails and ezines, audio allows you to communicate personally with your clients and subscribers, creating rapport and warming your market in a way not possible with text and graphics. NUMBER 7 : AUDIO IS CHEAP<br> Basic streaming audio buttons can be put on your website for as little as $19.95. Even the most advanced solutions cost around the $97 mark! Considering the uumph these little audio buttons give your site, a once off payment of 97 bucks is not a lot to part with! NUMBER 8 : AUDIO IS SIMPLE TO USE <br> You don't have to be a techie geek to put audio on your website. Most of the solutions out there require no html or flash know how at all. They are designed to be user friendly so even the technophobe should have no problem getting the job done quickly and easily! What are you waiting for ... go add audio now! Tracey Meagher is the founder of QuickandEasy Audio, a website that reviews all the latest resources and tools available for adding audio to your website. Visit <a target="_new" href="http://www.quickandeasyaudio.com">http://www.quickandeasyaudio.com</a> to receive free audio resources that will get audio on your website in less than 60 minutes! [Copyright 2005 QuickandEasyAudio ]

wav; Recording Voice or Instruments

A graduate student in Belfast wrote to me about a project he was doing. It is an inter-active instructional CD on the Tin Whistle. Obviously here is another application where you would record direct to wav. and forget about the midi. format. He wanted an authentic sound and midi. would never provide this. You might get close, if you used the right sound card or plug-ins and I will go into this in more detail in later writings about midi. If you can play an instrument or sing, you will want to record directly to wav. The procedure is much the same as when you record a tape or L.P. The key element here is to use a very high quality microphone. Plug the microphone into the microphone input of your sound card which will be the one with the picture of a microphone on it. Find the software for your sound card, (try accessories, if your computer came with a sound card,) and select the microphone input from your options or file menu. You are all set. If you have a good sound card, it may have come with a few other features that are useful; If it has a mixer, set the level of your input so it doesn't go into the red. This is important to eliminate 'clipping,' when you record. 'Clipping' is an unpleasant sounding distortion from having the levels too high. Also, your sound card may have come with some effects processing. These effects must be used 'on the fly.' That means they are utilized while you record rather than applied to the recording later. Don't be intimidated by this. They are easy to use and a lot of fun. Most likely you should use some of these effects, if you want a more professional sounding recording. Find the effects in the software for your sound card. These are usually available in what are called 'presets.' This means they are already created for you and given a name, such as 'vocal chorus.' 'Chorus' is an often used effect for vocals. It gives vocals that rich 'singing in the shower' sound. Reverb and delay are also used to enhance the richness of the tone. Try some different effects out and select the one that you think sounds best and record with it. The sound card may even give you the option of mixing your own effects. This will simply require a bit more trial and error but can be very fun and worthwhile. If you want a really authentic sound of a folk instrument, you may not want any effects at all. Brian is a graduate of the Peabody School of Music. He has performed in many groups, was formerly the lead singer for The Jabberwocky and played at the Coach House in San Clemente in the opening act for Hunter S. Thompson. Hear his music at <a target="_new" href="http://www.dizzyobrian.com">http://www.dizzyobrian.com</a>

wav; Recording Voice or Instruments

A graduate student in Belfast wrote to me about a project he was doing. It is an inter-active instructional CD on the Tin Whistle. Obviously here is another application where you would record direct to wav. and forget about the midi. format. He wanted an authentic sound and midi. would never provide this. You might get close, if you used the right sound card or plug-ins and I will go into this in more detail in later writings about midi. If you can play an instrument or sing, you will want to record directly to wav. The procedure is much the same as when you record a tape or L.P. The key element here is to use a very high quality microphone. Plug the microphone into the microphone input of your sound card which will be the one with the picture of a microphone on it. Find the software for your sound card, (try accessories, if your computer came with a sound card,) and select the microphone input from your options or file menu. You are all set. If you have a good sound card, it may have come with a few other features that are useful; If it has a mixer, set the level of your input so it doesn't go into the red. This is important to eliminate 'clipping,' when you record. 'Clipping' is an unpleasant sounding distortion from having the levels too high. Also, your sound card may have come with some effects processing. These effects must be used 'on the fly.' That means they are utilized while you record rather than applied to the recording later. Don't be intimidated by this. They are easy to use and a lot of fun. Most likely you should use some of these effects, if you want a more professional sounding recording. Find the effects in the software for your sound card. These are usually available in what are called 'presets.' This means they are already created for you and given a name, such as 'vocal chorus.' 'Chorus' is an often used effect for vocals. It gives vocals that rich 'singing in the shower' sound. Reverb and delay are also used to enhance the richness of the tone. Try some different effects out and select the one that you think sounds best and record with it. The sound card may even give you the option of mixing your own effects. This will simply require a bit more trial and error but can be very fun and worthwhile. If you want a really authentic sound of a folk instrument, you may not want any effects at all. Brian is a graduate of the Peabody School of Music. He has performed in many groups, was formerly the lead singer for The Jabberwocky and played at the Coach House in San Clemente in the opening act for Hunter S. Thompson. Hear his music at <a target="_new" href="http://www.dizzyobrian.com">http://www.dizzyobrian.com</a>

Adding Sound To Your Web Site - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Many webmasters like the idea of adding background music to their web sites but most shy away from doing it worrying about slow loading pages and large file sizes. There are many different ways to add background music to your site and some of them don't require large files to achieve professional results. Let's examine all the different ways to add background music to your site and rate them to find the best solution for you. 1) MIDI Files MIDI files are very small because they actually use your sound card's built-in instruments to create the sounds. The problem is that most sound cards don't have any decent sounds to start with, plus no two sound cards sound alike and therefore the results are very unpredictable. MIDI files usually sound like they're coming from one of those cheap Casio keyboards. Using MIDI for background music is very likely to make your site seem amateurish. Want to know how to do it anyway? Just add the line to your site. (Replace xyz with the name of the MIDI file you want to use!) The Autostart command will play the file automatically when the page is loaded. PROS; Very small file size, easy to implement CONS: Unpredictable results, amateurish sounds 2) WAV Files Using the WAV file format allows you to add professional sounding recordings to your site but the problem is that even if you use a low quality setting like 11k/8bit, the file sizes are still very large and it will take a long time for your music to load. And slow loading pages are the worst thing that can happen to a site. Implementing a WAV file on a web page is easy. Just add the line to your page's HTML code. There's an additional command to loop the WAV file but WAV files do not loop cleanly with the embed command. PROS: Many Quality Levels, Easy to implement CONS: Large File Sizes, WAV Files do not loop 3) MP3 Files MP3 files are highly compressed and don't take that long to load but the problem is that MP3s need to bring up an external player program and which in some cases takes your visitors away from your site altogether. Also, MP3 files don't loop cleanly. PROS: Smaller File Sizes, Good Quality Possible CONS: Needs external player software, not loopable 4) Flash If you own a program that can create Flash files, you will have lots of flexibility in adding sound to your site. Flash lets you import WAV as well as MP3 Files and then creates quite small files from these sounds that will load automatically on your site. You can set the quality level and therefore decide how large you want the Flash file to be. Flash also allows you to loop short pieces of sound to create 'continuous' background music files that can be quite small. But please note that only imported WAV files can be looped in Flash, MP3 files will not loop cleanly. PROS: Great Flexibility, Small File Sizes, expecially when looping sounds CONS: You need to buy expensive Flash software to create Flash Files 5) Pre-Made Flash Loops The newest thing on the market are pre-built Flash Music Loops. These files are professionally recorded, loop almost indefinitely and most of these Flash Music Loops are only about 20k in size so they load almost instantly. Flash Music Loops are available at <a href="http://www.flashmusictracks.com" target="_new">http://www.flashmusictracks.com</a> and currently there are three different loop packages available in all kinds of music styles from classical to techno. Using these pre-built Flash files is easy. Simply upload the "xyz.swf" Flash file to your server and add a few lines from the corresponding "xyz.html" file to your web page and presto...instant professional sounding background music. PROS: Extremely small file size, professional quality music CONS: None As you can see there are many different ways to add background music to your web pages and you don't have to worry about slow loading pages if you choose the right file format. (c)2004 Alan Steward About The Author Article by Alan Steward, a professional recording engineer and producer who worked with many Grammy award winning groups and musicians. (c)2004 Alan Steward - <a href="http://www.musicleads.net" target="_new">http://www.musicleads.net</a>

7 Ways to Use AUDIO to Increase Your Web and E-mail Sales

Thought about adding audio to your Web site yet? You should. While great copy does a good job of selling your services and products, audio will amplify the effect of your words. Audio gives you a more personal connection with your Web visitors. Social psychologists tell us that humans are more likely to trust you if they can both see you and hear you. And prospects are more likely to buy from those whom they feel they know, like, and trust. So let's think about how you can build that instant rapport with your prospects. What Could YOU Do With Audio? There are unlimited possibilities of what can be done with audio on Web sites and in e-mail, but here are seven simple ideas to get you started. 1. Greet Your Homepage Visitors. <br> Welcome first-time visitors to your Web site with your own voice. It's a much warmer welcome than text alone. 2. Create a Series of Audio Lessons. <br> Audio learning is hot! Teach your audience via your voice instead of just words on the page. Think about developing a series of mini-audio lessons for your prospects. 3. Share Your Interviews. <br> If you don't have an interview clip already, ask a friend or colleague to conduct a short, dynamic interview with you via phone. Record it and post it at your Web site. Or, do a series of interviews with other experts in your field and post them at your site to be listened to. 4. Samples of Teleseminars. <br> Want more signups for your free and/or paid teleseminars? Then start recording them. Pull out the highlights and post free clips of them at your Web site. 5. Pump Up Your Testimonials. <br> You probably already have customer testimonials on your site. Now amplify their impact with audio. Have your customers record their testimonials in their own voices, and post them on your site along with their names and photos. 6. Make Your E-mails and E-zines Talk. <br> Liven up your e-mails by making them talk to your prospects, subscribers, and customers. The members on your lists will feel like you are right there with them. (And remember, it will be that personal connection that encourages people to hire you or buy your products.) Be the first in your industry to do this, and watch your numbers rise! 7. Audio Postcards. <br> Reach out to your best customers and prospects for holidays, birthdays, or other special occasions by sending them an e-mail "postcard" accompanied with a personally recorded message. So What's the EASIEST Way to Post Audio? In the past, adding audio to your site wasn't that easy. You had to either spend hours learning how to do it yourself, or pay someone else to record it and host it for you. That's why I was never interested in audio before. I may be the E-zine Queen, but no way am I a techie queen. In fact, my VCR still blinks "12:00 ... 12:00 ... 12:00." Here's the good news: There's a brand new program that makes recording and posting audio ridiculously easy . It's called Audio Generator and was created by Armand Morin, the same guy who created PopUp Generator and a slew of other innovative "Generator" products. I signed up immediately after he debuted this at the System 3 Seminar in Ohio a few weeks ago. Here's an example of how easy Audio Generator is: Say you want to add an audio greeting to your site this afternoon. Just call Audio Generator's toll-free hot line and record your message. Then, as soon as you hang up the phone, go log into their site. Ta da ... your message is ready and waiting, with a line of HTML code for you to copy and paste on your home page. That's it! Even better, you can do this an unlimited number of times and have unlimited clips on your site (or multiple sites). You can also upload digital audio files up to 30 minutes in length , which I'm going to do for samples of my teleclasses. <a target="_new" href="http://www.netofficetoolbox.com/app/adtrack.as?AdID=38081">Click here to get the full story</a>, and see (and hear) The E-zine Queen's own audio testimonial at the Audio Generator site. Remember, It's That Personal Connection That Matters Take some time today to think about what YOU could do with audio at your site and in your e-mails to increase rapport with your visitors. Then choose at least one tactic to implement this month. It could be the best addition you've made to your online marketing efforts this year. (c) 2003 Alexandria K. Brown ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," is author of the award-winning manual, "Boost Business With Your Own E-zine." To learn more about her book and sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit her site at <a target="_new" href="http://EzineQueenTutorial.com/" onMouseover="window.status='http://EzineQueenTutorial.com/'; return true;" onMouseout="window.status=''; return true;">http://EzineQueenTutorial.com/</a>

Jingles - What Constitutes A Successful Jingle Campaign?

What constitutes a successful jingle campaign? In this article we will examine and listen to 4 successful jingle campaigns and look for key ingredients to their success. Jingle Campaign #1, Mr. Chau's Chinese Fast Food: <a target="_new" href="http://www.soundad.com/audio/MrChau.mp3 ">http://www.soundad.com/audio/MrChau.mp3</a> This radio & TV musical identity has been the cornerstone of Mr. Chau's campaign since 1996 and is still a current hit. In that time span he has grown from 6 to 22 regional locations. We were asked to find a creative and fun way to reach an across-the-board demographic (including children), with as much of his full menu as possible in the :60 radio spot. We decided that the variety on Mr. Chau's menu needed to be reflected with creative variety so we brought in a multiplicity of personalities and singers and pieced them into an up-tempo musical track punctuated with chopstick percussion. Click or paste the link above to listen. The 2nd campaign is a :60 radio & TV jingle for the Northern California Marine Association's Boat Shows in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento and San Jose, California. They were targeting a A35-64 demo but also wanted it to appeal to children. We chose reggae music as the vehicle and fun lyrics with great vocals to sell the boating lifestyle. The campaign is relatively new but is a smashing success. Click the following link to hear the jingle "Only in a Boat": <a target="_new"href="http://www.soundad.com/audio/NCMA.mp3">http://www.soundad.com/audio/NCMA.mp3</a> Campaign #3 is a national :30 TV spot (with jingle) that we wrote and produced for DAB (Low Carb) Beer. They wanted to target a specific female audience 25-34 with this low carb offering. They asked us to create something that was a musical cross between the Bangles and Sheryl Crow. Again, this has been a successful campaign for them. Grab a DAB at the link below: <a target="_new"href="http://www.soundad.com/audio/DAB.mp3">http://www.soundad.com/audio/DAB.mp3</a> Campaign #4, Petaluma Auto Plaza has a huge electronic sign on Hwy 101 in Northern California that we determined was the focal point of their campaign. We decided to "put them on the map" by writing a jingle in a Gospel Revival style: "I Saw the Sign in Petaluma" and we brought in gospel diva Jeannie Tracy (from Whitney Houston's Band) to sing it. <a target="_new"href="http://www.soundad.com/audio/pet_auto_plaza.mp3">http://www.soundad.com/audio/pet_auto_plaza.mp3</a> In order to create a truly successful jingle branding campaign that will cut through the clutter, a jingle/music production company must be willing to go the distance to help you position your products (or business) predominantly in the public consciousness with creativity and integrity. We spare no expense to get the best creative and musical talent to make our clients sparkle on the airwaves. You should expect the same of any company you choose to partner with. Don't settle for less. Barry Volk is a former producer/staff songwriter for ABC, MCA & Screen Gems-EMI Music Publishing, a 20th Century Fox solo recording artist, Musical Director for the West Coast Theater Company and National Director of Marketing for Metro Networks/Westwood One. His music production company, Barry Volk's Sound Advantage <a target="_new" href="http://www.soundad.com">http://www.soundad.com</a> creates and produces jingles and custom musical productions for radio and TV advertisers worldwide from small market to national in scope.

Seven Ways to Warm Your Prospects Using Website Audio

Gone are the days when putting audio on your website consisted of subjecting your visitors to gaudy musical fanfares and various clich?d sound effects. Fortunately, audio has now become a lot more sophisticated and new techniques that allow audio to be streamed have made it possible to use your own voice as a highly effective marketing tool. Most visitors to your website will have computers with audio capabilities. Using your own voice, you can deepen the impact of your sales message and develop a stronger connection with your visitors. Many websites using streaming audio to promote and sell services claim that audio increases their conversion by as much as 300%! Why is audio such an effective marketing tool? It's simple really. It's a well-known fact in consumer psychology that the more senses you engage, the easier it is to communicate a message and motivate a sale. Senses evoke emotion and emotions are memorable. When it comes to surfing the Internet, the sense of hearing is far more powerful than the sense of sight. Internet surfers remember only 20% of what they read, but remember an amazing 70% of what they hear. Visitors respond to your voice in way that cannot be achieved with words alone, no matter how great your copy is. Audio's power comes from its ability to reinforce your message by engaging your visitor's most powerful senses. Listed below are some of the most powerful ways to use streaming audio on your website: Introductions: Use streaming audio to introduce yourself, your website and some of your key products or services to your visitors. Doing this removes some of the anonymity of the web experience and helps develop trust between your and your prospect. Testimonials: It's a proven fact that testimonials that include a photograph appear more credible to visitors that those with text only. Testimonials that include text, a photo AND an audio note are the next best thing to having satisfied customers call your visitors and tell them personally how great your products are! Assurances: Placing audio notes at important points in your website, such as order forms, or payment links, is an excellent way to reassure visitors about common concerns. Streaming audio can be use to explain the payment process, security issues, merchant account details and any other concerns visitors may have relating to your website. Instructions: Streaming audio buttons allow you to quickly provide instructions to visitors. A great example of this can be found at http://www.ezinearticles.com. An audio note that explains exactly what you must do to make a successful submission supports each step of the article submission process! Tips: Over 80% of web surfers will click on link offering a tip? Why? Because they know a tip is a short piece of useful information. Reading a tip is not like reading an instruction manual. It's a chance to gain some information quickly. Provide an audio tip on your site each day and you'll find people just can't get enough of pressing that play button! Teleconferences and Seminars : Streaming audio is a great way to provide your visitors with playback on seminars and teleconferences. Thanks You's: Create a streaming audio message to send in emails every time a client or prospect buys your product or service. Acknowledging a purchase personally is a fantastic way to build up customer loyalty and boost repeat sales. Finally, a brief word of caution! Audio is an effective tool when used responsibly. Don't hit your visitors with audio as soon as they arrive at your site. You never know where people are accessing from or what other sound may be running on their computers. I've read about visitors being really annoyed by audio that played without invitation because they were listening to CD's or were sitting in their workplace. It's important that visitors have control over the audio. A simple invitation to click is all it takes. You'll be surprised at how many people are driven by curiosity and will feel compelled to click the play button. Also take time to prepare your message well. Try to animate your voice and inject some personality into your message by being conversational rather than formal. Most important of all, be confident and be yourself! This article may be reproduced in its entirety only if unaltered and the resource box is included. Tracey Meagher is the founder of QuickandEasyAudio.com, a website that reviews all the latest resources and tools available for adding audio to your website. Visit <a target="_new" href="http://www.quickandeasyaudio.com">http://www.quickandeasyaudio.com</a> to receive free audio resources that will help you add audio to your website in less than 60 minutes!

Dont Use Web Audio The Wrong Way

Have you ever wrestled with a set of instructions, but then got so frustrated with it all that you threw them aside in a fluster and tried to figure out how to do it? yourself? Resulting in?Making a great big mess of it all? Similarly, if you really want to use Web Audio the right way, the way that WORKS, then you need to know what DOESN'T work. Here's what many people do, pretty systematically? to hinder their marketing and audio responses: 1. Speaking into the microphone without a care for what they're saying, how they're saying it and, without any regard to who's listening! That's pretty scary. Mumbling along without paying any attention to the small details. It's what could sink the hopes of many? FAST! SIMPLE SOLUTION - Write out a little script. Then, rehearse it. After that, record it several times. Finally, choose the best of the lot and use it. See, I told you it was pretty simple. 2. Some feel that hiring a 'PROFESSIONAL' or 'DJ', to record the voice audio, is the way to go. Now, for some, that may seem a reasonable way out, but what's likely to happen is that the websites' PERSONALITY loses its authenticity. Somehow, most of us can detect when things seem out of sync. When things seem a little too? SLICK! SIMPLE SOLUTION - If you really want to get someone else to do the voice audio for you, then make sure they've got a warm, natural personality that shines through in their voice. It'll win people over. 3. Sending the recorded audio message to your website, and then? FORGETTING ABOUT IT! Have you ever dialled a phone number, got an answer machine message that was either way out of date or just plain irrelevant? What an unprofessional image to portray. Well, that's why NOT attending to what's on your messages, could cripple you more than you'd know! SIMPLE SOLUTION - Keep your audio updated! I'm not saying that you have to micro-manage it and change it every other day. But, keeping your messages fresh, alive and full of valuable, useful and usable information that addresses the needs of your audience? is what'll keep them loyal, attentive and eager to receive your future messages! 4. Leaving your audience mentally floating, not knowing what to do next. Have you ever experienced a scenario similar to this one: Whilst waiting on a train platform, an announcement is made to the waiting passengers as follows, "due to a fault on the line, please expect further delays". I'm in no doubt at all that this announcement would have left the passengers feeling concerned, confused and wondering what to do next. What the announcer should have taken the time to add is as follows, "as we have not received any information from our control centre indicating the expected length of delay, you may like to consider hopping on bus number 19, leaving the bus stop adjacent to the station entrance in 7 minutes time. Otherwise, please continue to listen for further announcements, which we will endeavour to make every five minutes. Please also accept our sincere apologies for the delay and any inconvenience this may have caused you". SIMPLE SOLUTION: People are silently begging to be told what to do next. If you can lead them to a specific outcome, they'll be putty in your hands! Whether it's instructions to go to a specific toll free number to get more information, or something they have to activate, like a membership number, whatever it is? tell them PRECISELY how to do it. Web Audio, used correctly, will have a dramatic impact on the way in which your customers respond to you. They'll be so 'stuck' on your website and addicted to your audio messages, that you'll soon be sending out birthday cards to them! FLASH AUDIO WIZARD has a simple in-built technology that'll give you the website personality you've always dreamed of. It's simple to use. It's easy to get started. Why not get your website 'speaking', today? Just visit <a href="http://www.FlashAudioWizard.com" target="_new">www.FlashAudioWizard.com</a> Copyright 2004 Nick James About The Author Nick James is a UK based direct marketer and product developer. During the last 3 years Nick has sold in excess of ?1 Million of products and services. Subscribe to his Free Tip Of The Week at: <a href="http://www.Nick-James.com" target="_new">www.Nick-James.com</a> New Product: <a href="http://www.FlashAudioWizard.com" target="_new">www.FlashAudioWizard.com</a>.

Adding Sound To Your Web Site - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Many webmasters like the idea of adding background music to their web sites but most shy away from doing it worrying about slow loading pages and large file sizes. There are many different ways to add background music to your site and some of them don't require large files to achieve professional results. Let's examine all the different ways to add background music to your site and rate them to find the best solution for you. 1) MIDI Files MIDI files are very small because they actually use your sound card's built-in instruments to create the sounds. The problem is that most sound cards don't have any decent sounds to start with, plus no two sound cards sound alike and therefore the results are very unpredictable. MIDI files usually sound like they're coming from one of those cheap Casio keyboards. Using MIDI for background music is very likely to make your site seem amateurish. Want to know how to do it anyway? Just add the line to your site. (Replace xyz with the name of the MIDI file you want to use!) The Autostart command will play the file automatically when the page is loaded. PROS; Very small file size, easy to implement CONS: Unpredictable results, amateurish sounds 2) WAV Files Using the WAV file format allows you to add professional sounding recordings to your site but the problem is that even if you use a low quality setting like 11k/8bit, the file sizes are still very large and it will take a long time for your music to load. And slow loading pages are the worst thing that can happen to a site. Implementing a WAV file on a web page is easy. Just add the line to your page's HTML code. There's an additional command to loop the WAV file but WAV files do not loop cleanly with the embed command. PROS: Many Quality Levels, Easy to implement CONS: Large File Sizes, WAV Files do not loop 3) MP3 Files MP3 files are highly compressed and don't take that long to load but the problem is that MP3s need to bring up an external player program and which in some cases takes your visitors away from your site altogether. Also, MP3 files don't loop cleanly. PROS: Smaller File Sizes, Good Quality Possible CONS: Needs external player software, not loopable 4) Flash If you own a program that can create Flash files, you will have lots of flexibility in adding sound to your site. Flash lets you import WAV as well as MP3 Files and then creates quite small files from these sounds that will load automatically on your site. You can set the quality level and therefore decide how large you want the Flash file to be. Flash also allows you to loop short pieces of sound to create 'continuous' background music files that can be quite small. But please note that only imported WAV files can be looped in Flash, MP3 files will not loop cleanly. PROS: Great Flexibility, Small File Sizes, expecially when looping sounds CONS: You need to buy expensive Flash software to create Flash Files 5) Pre-Made Flash Loops The newest thing on the market are pre-built Flash Music Loops. These files are professionally recorded, loop almost indefinitely and most of these Flash Music Loops are only about 20k in size so they load almost instantly. Flash Music Loops are available at <a href="http://www.flashmusictracks.com" target="_new">http://www.flashmusictracks.com</a> and currently there are three different loop packages available in all kinds of music styles from classical to techno. Using these pre-built Flash files is easy. Simply upload the "xyz.swf" Flash file to your server and add a few lines from the corresponding "xyz.html" file to your web page and presto...instant professional sounding background music. PROS: Extremely small file size, professional quality music CONS: None As you can see there are many different ways to add background music to your web pages and you don't have to worry about slow loading pages if you choose the right file format. (c)2004 Alan Steward About The Author Article by Alan Steward, a professional recording engineer and producer who worked with many Grammy award winning groups and musicians. (c)2004 Alan Steward - <a href="http://www.musicleads.net" target="_new">http://www.musicleads.net</a>

DVD Audio: An Introduction

DVD Audio is a music format that is designed to offer improved audio performance over CD. The new audio format can be used to provide listeners with Advanced Resolution stereo and/or multi-channel (up to a maximum of six channels) music. In order to play back DVD Audio discs, players have to be specially designed to support the format. So far, consumer electronics manufacturers have announced a range of DVD Audio players, including home decks, portable players and devices for cars. DVD Audio has a sampling rate of up to 192kHz compared to a maximum of 44.1kHz for CD. It also supports resolutions of up to 24 bits, compared to 16bits on CD. The idea behind DVD Audio is that it allows producers to give listeners a playback experience that is much more faithful to the original master recording that has been possible previously. DVD Audio discs have a much higher capacity than CDs. This extra space can be used to provide audio at the highest possible quality or for longer recordings, or to provide additional material, such as information on the artist, photos and even video, all of which can be displayed on a television screen. Alternatively, DVD Audio discs currently on the market from the likes of the Warner group of labels have the audio content in both DVD Audio format and as Dolby Digital surround so that they can be played back on regular DVD players. DVD Audio discs are navigable in the same way as DVD Video when played back on a player connected to a TV set. Users can select the required track from an on- screen menu and with an internet connection, can click on links to go to websites. These dual format discs are a good way to kick-start the market while DVD Audio players are still relatively rare. The market will also be helped by combined DVD Video and Audio players. Robert Armstrong is a contributor to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.the- hdtv-tuner.com">The HDTV Tuner</a> - a guide to the kit, the content and the issues related to HDTV.

How To Record Streaming Audio, Internet Radio And

When it comes to music on the Internet, you have two legal choices: you can stream tracks, or you can purchase them as individual downloads. Replay Music can record streamed songs from most applications, break them into individual files (either as WAV or 128- to 320-Kbps MP3 files) and even tag them with the correct song and artist info. It does this by taking a digital fingerprint of a song and comparing it with the information stored in its central server. The program works with a variety of streams, including those from Napster, Rhapsody and Musicmatch that require a subscription. Replay also has built-in CD-burning controls, and it can burn CDs or send tracks to iTunes automatically. With just one click, only Replay Music can record streaming music from these popular services and more: * Napster? * Rh------? * Music M----? * Y! Music Unlimited? * Y! Launch ? * AccuRadio? (Legal note: Replay Music is not affiliated with any of these services, nor do we encourage violating any license agreements. We offer this list only for compatibility purposes.) Tags Songs Automatically Only Replay Music can automatically tag your recorded MP3s. Using proprietary song recognition technology, Replay Music identifies each song after it's recorded, and adds the artist, song title, album and genre information to each MP3 file. Not only can you record, but now you know what you're listening to! Precise Track Splitting Replay Music sports the most sophisticated track splitting algorithms on the planet. Besides just recording and tagging, each MP3 file contains the entire song -- no more, no less. Other recording programs may chop off the start or end of the song, or add unwanted noise. Replay Music<br> www.deprice.com/replaymusic.htm David D. Deprice is an expert when it comes to buying software for pennies on the dollar. To learn his dirty little tricks, visit <a target="_new" href="http://www.deprice.com">http://www.deprice.com</a>

Dont Use Web Audio The Wrong Way

Have you ever wrestled with a set of instructions, but then got so frustrated with it all that you threw them aside in a fluster and tried to figure out how to do it? yourself? Resulting in?Making a great big mess of it all? Similarly, if you really want to use Web Audio the right way, the way that WORKS, then you need to know what DOESN'T work. Here's what many people do, pretty systematically? to hinder their marketing and audio responses: 1. Speaking into the microphone without a care for what they're saying, how they're saying it and, without any regard to who's listening! That's pretty scary. Mumbling along without paying any attention to the small details. It's what could sink the hopes of many? FAST! SIMPLE SOLUTION - Write out a little script. Then, rehearse it. After that, record it several times. Finally, choose the best of the lot and use it. See, I told you it was pretty simple. 2. Some feel that hiring a 'PROFESSIONAL' or 'DJ', to record the voice audio, is the way to go. Now, for some, that may seem a reasonable way out, but what's likely to happen is that the websites' PERSONALITY loses its authenticity. Somehow, most of us can detect when things seem out of sync. When things seem a little too? SLICK! SIMPLE SOLUTION - If you really want to get someone else to do the voice audio for you, then make sure they've got a warm, natural personality that shines through in their voice. It'll win people over. 3. Sending the recorded audio message to your website, and then? FORGETTING ABOUT IT! Have you ever dialled a phone number, got an answer machine message that was either way out of date or just plain irrelevant? What an unprofessional image to portray. Well, that's why NOT attending to what's on your messages, could cripple you more than you'd know! SIMPLE SOLUTION - Keep your audio updated! I'm not saying that you have to micro-manage it and change it every other day. But, keeping your messages fresh, alive and full of valuable, useful and usable information that addresses the needs of your audience? is what'll keep them loyal, attentive and eager to receive your future messages! 4. Leaving your audience mentally floating, not knowing what to do next. Have you ever experienced a scenario similar to this one: Whilst waiting on a train platform, an announcement is made to the waiting passengers as follows, "due to a fault on the line, please expect further delays". I'm in no doubt at all that this announcement would have left the passengers feeling concerned, confused and wondering what to do next. What the announcer should have taken the time to add is as follows, "as we have not received any information from our control centre indicating the expected length of delay, you may like to consider hopping on bus number 19, leaving the bus stop adjacent to the station entrance in 7 minutes time. Otherwise, please continue to listen for further announcements, which we will endeavour to make every five minutes. Please also accept our sincere apologies for the delay and any inconvenience this may have caused you". SIMPLE SOLUTION: People are silently begging to be told what to do next. If you can lead them to a specific outcome, they'll be putty in your hands! Whether it's instructions to go to a specific toll free number to get more information, or something they have to activate, like a membership number, whatever it is? tell them PRECISELY how to do it. Web Audio, used correctly, will have a dramatic impact on the way in which your customers respond to you. They'll be so 'stuck' on your website and addicted to your audio messages, that you'll soon be sending out birthday cards to them! FLASH AUDIO WIZARD has a simple in-built technology that'll give you the website personality you've always dreamed of. It's simple to use. It's easy to get started. Why not get your website 'speaking', today? Just visit <a href="http://www.FlashAudioWizard.com" target="_new">www.FlashAudioWizard.com</a> Copyright 2004 Nick James About The Author Nick James is a UK based direct marketer and product developer. During the last 3 years Nick has sold in excess of ?1 Million of products and services. Subscribe to his Free Tip Of The Week at: <a href="http://www.Nick-James.com" target="_new">www.Nick-James.com</a> New Product: <a href="http://www.FlashAudioWizard.com" target="_new">www.FlashAudioWizard.com</a>.

Add Audio to Your Web Site and Increase Your Sales up to 35%!

Ok, you've got your site built, you have traffic coming to it, a good product at a reasonable price.... hmmm... what else do you need? What else could increase your conversion rate? Audio! All right I know what you're thinking... "Why should I go to all of the trouble of adding audio to my web site?" Because it can increase your sales by up to 35%!! That's why. Adding streaming audio it isn't as hard as you have been led to believe and you don't even have to pay a monthly fee either. You can start with sound recorder (Pre-installed on every Windows computer) and the free microphone that came with your computer. Some of the things you can do with audio to enhance your site are: * Create audio greetings * Create audio testimonials * Narrate tutorials * Create audio ezines * Add audio files for your visitors to download * Create audio articles * Add your band's music clips as tempting teasers to get buyers * Read children's stories * Tell Jokes * Sing... * Add music as a background to your web site (Tastefully - please!) This list goes on and on. Let's quickly cover a couple of the items on the list and see what the advantages are. Create Audio Greetings: Well, I think this one is fun. Don't you often wonder what that "Guru" sounds like? Or even what a web master who has created your favorite web tool or ebook? Adding an audio greeting is actually about the easiest thing to do if you want to improve your sales. For most web sites, when done tastefully, the sales can jump up to 35%! People just trust you more and feel like they know you a little better if they hear your voice. Also, excitement is contagious. If you are excited about your product, ezine or membership site you can hear it in your voice when you talk about it. SO CAN YOUR CUSTOMERS! And more importantly, your potential customers. Audio Testimonials: What can I say about this compelling reason, but this... what would be more believable to you - a web site with a bunch of written testimonials or a web site where you can hear the actual voices of current / previous purchasers explaining what benefits they got from the product? How do you even know for sure the written testimonials are real? It's hands down the one with the audio. All you need is Audacity (Which is free at http://audacity.com) to edit down too long testimonials - actually, is there such a thing as too-long testimonial? Maybe not - and the ability to have customers send you .wav files and a small picture of themselves. NOTE: You can get a free script from Will Bontrager at http://willmaster.com that will allow you to accept files from your customers OR you can set up a seperate ftp account at your server for customer uploads. See other articles in this series to learn how to implement this. Piece of cake! There are a couple of other steps to adding the audio to your site, but I will get to that in other parts of this article series. Create Audio Ezines: Have you ever heard Jim Edwards "I Gotta Tell You" ezine? (http://igottatellyou.com) Or watched the multi-media ebook and ezine how-to tutorials in Epublishing Express? (http://epublishing-express.com) It is so much more compelling to hear someone explain exactly what to do than read a dry ezine (No offense to all the other thousands of ezine writers out there) or ebook (Ditto to you ebook writers) and you learn much faster. Did you know that you only retain about 10-15% of what you read once? But that retention goes up to 60% if you hear it at the same time and flies up to 80% for a multi-media presentation. How many fewer customer service calls and emails would you get if you customers were retaining 80% of what you were teaching them? I can tell you... a lot! Think of all the extra time you would have to promote your business, create new products (Audio and multimedia products of course!) Heck, even spend more time with your family and hobbies. How much happier would your customers be if they were able to duplicate your success and complete your tutorials, assignments, or follow your direction? Again - a lot! How many more of your customers would buy other products from you if you were successful in teaching them or helping them with your first product? I think you can see where I am going with this... So, know that you know how important audio is how do you get started? The first thing you can do is go to http://easy-web-site-audio.com and sign up for the free Audio Tips Ecourse and get a new tip every three days on creative audio uses. That's a good start :) Remember those audio testimonials? Here are some other free resources for all of you ebook and ezine writers to get you started: (Some long links may wrap) Microsoft: http://microsoft.com (Free) Additionally you can access lots of free content add-ons, tools, and tutorials when you go straight to the media section on the Microsoft web site. Find it at Media Player v.9: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.aspx (Free) Here you can upgrade to Media Player 9 (To store all of your audio files you have made in the easy access audio library) which is free. Media Player 9 is the preferred media player for listening to streaming audio along with Real Player which is also free. There are a lot of add-ons for the program, especially you want to get the one that converts your MP3s into smaller WMA files and save space on your computer. (It is a free teaser, they will probably try to get you to buy the full Plus! collection, but you don't have to!). Visit http://www.microsoft.com/plus for more information on the PLUS! product if you think in addition to converting audio you might want to let the kids play around with Media Player too. :) Remember all that extra family time you are going to have since you won't have hardly any customer service issues? Real: http://real.com (Free) Get the Real Audio player basic program which allows you to play Real Audio formatted files. A lot of online content is in this format. Don't forget if you are adding Real Audio to your web site to get the free "Producer" which converts other types of audio files (> wav and .MP3 for example) into Real Audio files for uploading, streaming, etc. Producer Basic (Free): http://www.realnetworks.com/products/producer/basic.html If you want to stream from your computer or server (Warning advanced topic!) you can use the free Helix Server Basic. Helix Server Basic (Free): http://forms.real.com/rnforms/products/servers/eval/mbps.html Also use the free PresenterOne to add audio and video to your PowerPoint presentations and stream them from your web site! http://www.realnetworks.com/products/presenterone/index.html (main page) and the free version is at: http://forms.real.com/rnforms/products/tools/presenteronebasic/in dex.html (Approx. 20mb) since it requires Producer (Real Audio product with a free version see above) it includes it in the installation. So if you are thinking of enhancing your PowerPoint slides and are going to download this, you don't need to download Producer separately. Shoutcast: http://shoutcast.com (Free) Start your own radio station for free. And obviously link to it from your web site and broadcast tutorial and educational content on your niche topic. Free to record and free to broadcast. Live365: http://www.live365.com (Fee) You can also start your own radio station starting at only $7/month. Pirate Radio: http://pirateradio.com (Fee) Purchase software for $29 one-time fee that will having you broadcasting in about 1/2 hour. Keep your eyes peeled for more audio/video/multi-media related articles in this series. We will be talking about different types of audio files, conducting interviews, recording tutorials, adding audio testimonials to your web site, and more. :) By the time we're done you will be an audio / video master! "Techie" Teri Mramer is the busy web master at TreeFree Publishing, The Editor of Epublishing Express- The only ezine that teaches ebook and ezine publishing with screenshots and videos! <a target="_new" href="http://epublishing-express.com">http://Epublishing-Express.com</a> Also author of "Easy Web Site Audio!" The Easy Web Site Audio tutorial! e-Manual comes with 15 how-to videos. Add audio to your web site in about an hour! <a target="_new" href="http://easy-web-site-audio.com">http://Easy-Web-Site-Audio.com</a>

Adding Sound To Your Web Site - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Many webmasters like the idea of adding background music to their web sites but most shy away from doing it worrying about slow loading pages and large file sizes. There are many different ways to add background music to your site and some of them don't require large files to achieve professional results. Let's examine all the different ways to add background music to your site and rate them to find the best solution for you. 1) MIDI Files MIDI files are very small because they actually use your sound card's built-in instruments to create the sounds. The problem is that most sound cards don't have any decent sounds to start with, plus no two sound cards sound alike and therefore the results are very unpredictable. MIDI files usually sound like they're coming from one of those cheap Casio keyboards. Using MIDI for background music is very likely to make your site seem amateurish. Want to know how to do it anyway? Just add the line to your site. (Replace xyz with the name of the MIDI file you want to use!) The Autostart command will play the file automatically when the page is loaded. PROS; Very small file size, easy to implement CONS: Unpredictable results, amateurish sounds 2) WAV Files Using the WAV file format allows you to add professional sounding recordings to your site but the problem is that even if you use a low quality setting like 11k/8bit, the file sizes are still very large and it will take a long time for your music to load. And slow loading pages are the worst thing that can happen to a site. Implementing a WAV file on a web page is easy. Just add the line to your page's HTML code. There's an additional command to loop the WAV file but WAV files do not loop cleanly with the embed command. PROS: Many Quality Levels, Easy to implement CONS: Large File Sizes, WAV Files do not loop 3) MP3 Files MP3 files are highly compressed and don't take that long to load but the problem is that MP3s need to bring up an external player program and which in some cases takes your visitors away from your site altogether. Also, MP3 files don't loop cleanly. PROS: Smaller File Sizes, Good Quality Possible CONS: Needs external player software, not loopable 4) Flash If you own a program that can create Flash files, you will have lots of flexibility in adding sound to your site. Flash lets you import WAV as well as MP3 Files and then creates quite small files from these sounds that will load automatically on your site. You can set the quality level and therefore decide how large you want the Flash file to be. Flash also allows you to loop short pieces of sound to create 'continuous' background music files that can be quite small. But please note that only imported WAV files can be looped in Flash, MP3 files will not loop cleanly. PROS: Great Flexibility, Small File Sizes, expecially when looping sounds CONS: You need to buy expensive Flash software to create Flash Files 5) Pre-Made Flash Loops The newest thing on the market are pre-built Flash Music Loops. These files are professionally recorded, loop almost indefinitely and most of these Flash Music Loops are only about 20k in size so they load almost instantly. Flash Music Loops are available at <a href="http://www.flashmusictracks.com" target="_new">http://www.flashmusictracks.com</a> and currently there are three different loop packages available in all kinds of music styles from classical to techno. Using these pre-built Flash files is easy. Simply upload the "xyz.swf" Flash file to your server and add a few lines from the corresponding "xyz.html" file to your web page and presto...instant professional sounding background music. PROS: Extremely small file size, professional quality music CONS: None As you can see there are many different ways to add background music to your web pages and you don't have to worry about slow loading pages if you choose the right file format. (c)2004 Alan Steward About The Author Article by Alan Steward, a professional recording engineer and producer who worked with many Grammy award winning groups and musicians. (c)2004 Alan Steward - <a href="http://www.musicleads.net" target="_new">http://www.musicleads.net</a>

MP3 vs. WMA

There are just a few audio compression formats out there, just like there are only a few image compression formats (you may have heard of them: JPG, GIF, BMP). Two of the most popular audio formats are WMA, or Windows Media Audio, and MP3 (Short for MPEG, Moving Pictures Experts Group, Audio Layer 3). WMA is the older audio format, produced by Microsoft, to work with Microsoft's Windows media player. The WMA compression format was designed specifically for this format, and thus can not be converted to other audio formats. The audio quality of WMA and MP3 audio formats tends to be noticeably different. WMA is a decent quality audio format when streaming at phoneline speeds (maybe 30kbps or so). At such speed WMA almost reaches an FM level of audio quality, although not quite. At 128kbps, Microsoft claims the WMA is nearly CD-quality, although many would deny this. WMA, however, is not to be completely looked over. The compression provides relatively small audio files and they require less processing power to execute. It thus retains a deminishing niche as MP3 has become more popular and widely used. The MP3 audio compression was developed in Germany in 1991 by the Fraunhofer Institute. MP3 typically provides higher quality sound than WMA because it uses perceptual audio coding to compress CD-quality sound by a factor of 12. As a result, MP3 has become almost the universal standard among audio usage and broadcasting. It provides CD-quality sound at reasonable compression sizes and high streaming speeds. Watch out, however, at low bitrates, as MP3 quality will likely suffer. Bradley James is a senior editor at <a target="_new" href="http://www.scinet.cc">SciNet.cc</a>, a website containing many helpful consumer electronics review articles. For more information on MP3 and WMA audio formats, please visit our <a target="_new" href="http://www.scinet.cc/articles/wma-vs-mp3/wma-mp3.html">MP3 vs. WMA</a> webpage.

How To Record Streaming Audio, Internet Radio And

When it comes to music on the Internet, you have two legal choices: you can stream tracks, or you can purchase them as individual downloads. Replay Music can record streamed songs from most applications, break them into individual files (either as WAV or 128- to 320-Kbps MP3 files) and even tag them with the correct song and artist info. It does this by taking a digital fingerprint of a song and comparing it with the information stored in its central server. The program works with a variety of streams, including those from Napster, Rhapsody and Musicmatch that require a subscription. Replay also has built-in CD-burning controls, and it can burn CDs or send tracks to iTunes automatically. With just one click, only Replay Music can record streaming music from these popular services and more: * Napster? * Rh------? * Music M----? * Y! Music Unlimited? * Y! Launch ? * AccuRadio? (Legal note: Replay Music is not affiliated with any of these services, nor do we encourage violating any license agreements. We offer this list only for compatibility purposes.) Tags Songs Automatically Only Replay Music can automatically tag your recorded MP3s. Using proprietary song recognition technology, Replay Music identifies each song after it's recorded, and adds the artist, song title, album and genre information to each MP3 file. Not only can you record, but now you know what you're listening to! Precise Track Splitting Replay Music sports the most sophisticated track splitting algorithms on the planet. Besides just recording and tagging, each MP3 file contains the entire song -- no more, no less. Other recording programs may chop off the start or end of the song, or add unwanted noise. Replay Music<br> www.deprice.com/replaymusic.htm David D. Deprice is an expert when it comes to buying software for pennies on the dollar. To learn his dirty little tricks, visit <a target="_new" href="http://www.deprice.com">http://www.deprice.com</a>

7 Ways to Use Website Audio in Your Marketing Arsenal

Most visitors to your website are using computers with audio capabilities. Recently introduced techniques make it easy to take advantage of this capability. In the past, web audio was primarily decorative, consisting of musical fanfares or other clich?d sound effects. Now, you can use audio to multiply the impact of your message and create stronger bonds with your visitors. Audio's power comes from its ability to engage more of your visitor's senses. The more senses you engage, the easier it will be to effectively communicate. Instead of just reading your words and looking at your picture, you can communicate with your voice ? and the voices of your clients. The power of audio can be appreciated by comparing the newspaper column version of Tom and Ray Magliozzi's Car Talk with the program aired each week on National Public Radio. Although the newspaper column and radio program address the same topics, it's far more fun to listen to Car Talk ? where you can experience Tom and Ray's intonations and phrasing ? than to read the same words. Here are some of the ways you can employ audio on your website: - Welcoming messages. You can create closer emotional bonds with website visitors by personally welcoming them to your site and introducing some of the features they should explore. - Testimonials. Audio testimonials are far more powerful that written testimonials, especially if you include a photograph of the individual speaking the testimonial. The next best thing to a face-to-face referral is a recording of a client explaining their satisfaction with your product in their own words. - Guarantees. Your satisfaction guarantees gain impact when you deliver them in your own voice. Place them on your order form, at the point of sale. People are inherently cautious about ordering products and services from the Internet. Reassure them that their credit card and personal information are safe with you. - Seminars and teleconferences. Short excerpts about upcoming events can make your event even more appealing. Snippets from past seminars can whet visitors' appetites for more. - Tips. Add interest to your site by describing an audio 'tip of the day' or 'tip of the week' in your own words. Be sure to offer access to previous tips, too. - Audio postcards. You can include audio invitations and testimonials as links in email sent to clients and prospects. To arrange an audio testimonial, simply provide your client with a phone number and password, and invite them to call up and express their satisfaction with their purchase from you. Audio postcards are a great way to stay in contact with your clients and prospects with an announcement of an upcoming product or service. They are also a quick way to acknowledge a special occasion. - Streaming audio can be used to allow visitors to playback longer events, like seminars or teleconferences. When you add audio to your website, allow your visitors to maintain control. Don't begin playing your message when the webpage loads. Instead, invite visitors to 'click here' to hear your voice. Keep your messages as short and concise as possible. And avoid 'scripting' your introductions and guarantees. Write down the key ideas you want to communicate, but deliver them in your own words as conversationally as possible. Web audio is no longer a futuristic luxury. Web audio is here now and it's as close as your telephone. It is an affordable and easily added feature that can set you apart from the competition and help communicate your message with added impact. Roger C. Parker knows the secrets to promoting your business one page at a time. Find out the simple way to keep in constant touch with your customers, while saving you time and money. Visit <a target="_new" href="http://www.OnePageNewsletters.com">http://www.OnePageNewsletters.com</a> for your three free reports.