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Hi John,

I think it depends on how large these audio files are-- if they are small enough, I wouldn't worry about having them stream in the technical sense of the term. With broadband as fast as it is, I would just use the HTML5 audio or other embed tag and point to them. Files can even begin to play without being fully downloaded in the player. A lot of "streaming" music services behave this way. 

The advantage with true streaming is the ability to take huge files (think of a Netflix or HD YouTube video) and jump to any part of the file without the whole thing having to download. It's also essential, of course, for delivering live content. 

On another note, the HTML5 audio tag can support multiple sources of content, and if you have both an AIFF and MP3 version of the file on your server, the tag can be written to prioritize the AIFF while having a redundant playback option for MP3 for larger support. 

Anyway, this is my understanding of the issue, from working on software for our language faculty. Best of luck!

Dan Nickolai, Ph.D. 
Director of the Language Resource Center
Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Saint Louis University
(314) 977-3644

http://www.slu.edu/x49831.xml
http://ispraak.com/about.html
http://tiny.cc/slupe



On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 3:21 PM, Derek Stearns Roff <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Playing audio from a website is one of the most common web page enhancements, hence there are lots of approaches, many of them archaic or dubious.  AIFF is a great audio format, easily converted to anything you might desire, but perhaps not that widely supported for direct web playback.  MP3 is the most common audio option, although more modern formats like MP4 or AAC have some pluses.  HTML5 supports audio playback directly in a variety of audio encodings.  See the two links below.  

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10041723/how-to-embed-audio-within-a-website
http://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements/audio

Your professor should find it pretty easy to use the old audio files to create a more modern audio playback structure, whenever the time comes.  HTML5 will probably make it pretty easy.   

Derek

Derek Roff




On May 4, 2016, at 5:12 PM, Lynch, John <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I’m working with a faculty member on a website/web application supporting undergraduate linguistics classes. The PHP code behind the application is over 10 years old, with various patches over the years, and the audio files were originally stored as .aiff, and delivered via Quicktime streaming. Unfortunately, now that Quicktime is fading from popularity, this professor is worried that her application will become inaccessible to students if she doesn’t update it.

I’m curious, what format and delivery protocol are people using for audio files, when they want to minimize long-term maintenance of the resources? Obviously, she could just do a direct download of .wav files; but I’m wondering if there’s something else out there that I’m not thinking of.

Sincerely,

John A. Lynch, Ph.D. | Academic Technology Manager
UCLA CENTER FOR DIGITAL HUMANITIES





--
Dan Nickolai, Ph.D. 
Director of the Language Resource Center
Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Saint Louis University
(314) 977-3644