[…] 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.
One route (it's not free, though) is to use streaming video/audio software like Wowza (self hosted, or though Amazon, etc.). A good front-end (also not free) for your web site (to use in combination with Wowza streaming) is JW Player.
https://www.jwplayer.com
It's quite likely your audio files in the .mov format will work under Wowza (unless they were created with some really old / odd codec), because the mov container is the same as mp4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime Wowza will provide a workable stream to most modern computers, tablets, and smart phones.
https://www.wowza.com
Hopefully the original .aiff files are still around, because uncompressed audio in that format (or uncompressed .wav) is best for creating compressed files for publishing, should you ever need or want to output in any other format of your choosing. While you can most likely use the .mov container format with Wowza, you should pick some other container (e.g., .mp4) going forward (with new audio files, that is).
As with any purchasing, be sure to inquire about an educational discount. Good luck.