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