Judy began by likening sound to the poor bastard child of any project, but an extremely important, subconscious element. Sound, she explained, gets you in the mood, it conveys emotion, it can be used to manipulate, which equals getting rich! [to cheers from the Peanut Gallery].

When she saw Riven, she agreed with Broderbund attributing the success of this game, to the excellent sound!

Movies, she explained, spend millions on sound. Judy proposed to us that we try looking at a movie on the TV, with the mute button active, so there is no sound. Even in a big scene with lots of explosions, she cautioned, the special effects won't seem exciting until you hit mute, and the sound brings it alive!

She gave an example, when Lucas brought in executives to look at a clip with fuzzy sound, and then again with clean sound, each executive swore the clip looked better when the sound was clean. The picture, she clarified, was the same in each clip!

Chris van Rensburg opened with a disclaimer that in the interest of time, he needed to begin as if everyone was familiar with Headspace and their patented Beatnik plug-in to run Hypersound, invented by CEO Thomas Dolby Robertson. I was fortunate enough to attend Mr. Robertson's presentation as part of the San Francisco State Multimedia Studies Program in October97 which I will now include.

He would like to be remembered, he explained, for something greater than his 1983 hit piece of "fluff", She Blinded Me with Science.

Through the centuries, he continued, artists take over wall space, starting with paintings in early caves, then Frescoes, then can you blame today's youth for spray-painting empty walls?

As man builds then leaves waste, artists turn it into something beautiful. He gave an example, leave oil drums on a beautiful, white beach in the Caribbean, and you get steel drum music!

He gave us some interesting history of humble beginnings with a single-track recorder, making overlays playing guitar over the sound of the first track to create the second, and so forth. He came from the same small town as Emo Phillips, but even after his big hit on MTV, he paused to comment that he shouldn't bite the hand that feeds him, talking about She Blinded Me with Science as fluff, after all, it did give him his break allowing him to play with most of his music idols, except for Emo! [a laugh of sympathy from the Peanut Gallery].

Continuing his story of early days, he remembered playing in the underground Metro station in Paris with a hat for tips, if he had enough change by 10:30 he would take a break and have breakfast, if not until 2:30, he had lunch... not as glamorous as it sounds. The end of his street career came when the angry French Policeman who thought his share of the tip was not big enough that day, smashed his guitar against the wall!.

A turn of good luck, he continued, and he wound up in America playing piano for Foreigner, on their hit track I've Been Waiting. Surrounded by 24-track recorders, in a professional studio, at 19 years old, Thomas felt like a kid in a candy store!

To prove his claim, he logged onto his Spooky creation at Universal Studios and the sound began to play before the graphics were finished loading [to oos and aah's from the Peanut Gallery].

Chris explained the goal of Beatnik is to create a medium for artists to create original music, with reliable playback. Support will be included in the next release of JDK [Java Developer Kit], ActiveX control and Netscape Communicator 4.

He created the music object's API [Appliation Program Interface] for Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 4 to look the same, using a Javascript library.

There are three elements, he explained:

1. Beatnik Player: the plug-in part
2. Editor: to create RMF [Rich Music Format] files
and

3. Website: for cool, original content!

With only a 3K base file size, MIDI [Music Interface Digital Interface] data can be compressed from 20-30 percent of the original including Pitchband and Widthband data!

Another goal of theirs he stated, is to make authoring original music content accessible cross-platform. In response to a question about Direct Sound from the Peanut Gallery, Chris explained they are currently using a WAV device, Direct Sound had a 200 million/second delay but they are moving back to Direct Sound in the future.

Beatnik will allow you to export using IMA compression. It may have MPEG compression in the future but, he cautioned, RealAudio doesn't have the interactivity.

Beatnik also allows you to combine sample data into RMF [Rich Music Format] with specific samples, whole 128K sounds times two, can make a small instrument bank. You can customize small sets of instruments and add vocals to make the user think it's RealAudio, but it's really MIDI music!

They funded a composer with original MIDI to write to 32-voice polyphony, and he promised us that 64-voice polyphony is coming.

David Hanes took the floor for The Sound Wave, representing musical artists and multi-language voice-overs producing original content.

They determine whether to use a server-based application, depending on the user base. Often clients, he lamented, pick a product based on affordability or compatibility, over a superior authoring tool [nods of sympathy from the Peanut Gallery].

Leroy Shyne took center stage with 25 years of history as an audio designer and specialist. As Web Authors, he admonished us, we must recognize the almighty Market Share. Favoring economics and user-friendliness over a superior product, .. happens all the time.

The two main issues, he identified as:

1. File Size
and

2. Download Time

How to reduce file size to reach 90 percent of the potential audience? One way is to lower the resolution from 44K to 22K, since a PC speaker won't play the highest octave anyway. He gave a further example, at 5000 cycles and only 11K, you lose a little of the highest octave, maybe a high hat cymbal, but you still haven't ruined the music, yet! [to peals of laughter from the Peanut Gallery].

IMA = Perceptual Encoding

Lowering to 8-bit, creates quantization noise [meaning it was not there to begin with], and IMA only works with 16-bit. He qualified that 8-bit is really bad, but a file using 16-bit with a 4-1 compression ratio, now you are getting a 2 minute song to only 1MB!

Most people, he cautioned us, don't have a T1. Aim for 28.8 modem speed to download. A 20 second MIDI file that loops, can create almost instant background.

He stressed caution in adding music to a web site, especially with a control panel in your face!

Music is not seamless when it requires user-intervention.

It's OK to provide a choice, he qualified, but remember to put a background sound tag AND an embed tag in the same file so both browsers can read it [so I did].

Leroy reminded us to test any new web page with all browsers, not just one set of tags.

Sound, he continued, adds emotional content, you double your investment in audio technology to reach the Television audience!

Judy Munsen took the floor once again, to address the question Why use audio for business?

Because, she explained, it makes the site more memorable, it draws visitors back!

It instills a subconscious message, an image of your brand for Brand Identity.

As to the question of how to assure quality playback? Use Beatnik!

She cautioned us that there is nothing more annoying than background sound you can't get to stop playing, one time she tried to get a little repetitive number to stop by leaving the page, but No, she exclaimed, it kept playing, so she tried closing the browser, but it still kept playing. She finally closed Windows in a last effort and, you guessed it, it was still playing! [the Peanut Gallery exploded in laughter].

Judy thanked everyone [to loud applause, at least 2MB worth from the Peanut Gallery] and encouraged us to hear the benefits of Audio on the Web for ourselves!