Online Audio - A Quick Intro

A quick intro to online listening...

The computer is a multimedia device. With the right software and adequate computer resources, professional audio editing, video editing, and even complete music synthesizers appear on-screen. Even consumer computer stores have entry-level video/audio packages to process your audio collection or camcorder movies into CD's or DVD's. Some computers are being marketed as high-end audio/visual components.

At the very least, your computer should have some good speakers or a direct connection to your main stereo listening system. Some computer speaker systems can do an amazing job for about $200. But why spend any more when a cheap cable can run right to your stereo from your sound card's "line out"?

Oh, and of course headphones have their place, too.

Your Internet connection? There are few media sites that have much of a chance of working with a dial-up account anymore. A high-speed connection from a cable or DSL provider is really the way to go - you usually don't need the highest speed tiers for good audio reception.. I'm partial to cable of course (see the end of this page for the reason for my bias...)

Once you're wired up, how do you listen (and view, for video items)?

Software - the software is free from the providers (at least a basic version - they'll always be trying to sell you their "pro" versions, various subscription music services, etc., so beware and click your links carefully).

The dominant Windows operating system from Microsoft includes the Windows Media Player, which covers some basic needs, but do NOT depend on it for some of the more interesting stuff out there. Get these:

ESSENTIAL SOFTWARE:

RealPlayer - www.real.com (Windows, Mac, Linux) - a feature-rich multimedia broadcasting environment, very common. It's still a dominant audio/video webcast format. I like it mostly for the wonderful way you can synchronized photos, web pages, etc. with the audio, but now lots of other options have become popular in the market place.
Winamp (Windows)- I've come to love this for day-to-day CD and mp3 playback - maybe it's their trademark llama in the logo :-) ... But more importantly, it plays the newer aacPlus streams being used by many classical webcasters. This is a very fine format that tests show sounds better at slower bitrates than the old standby, mp3.
QuickTime and/or iTunes (Windows, Mac) - www.apple.com/quicktime / www.apple.com/itunes - another fine media format that you should be ready to roll with. The QuickTime player will often show up right in your browser window to play .mp3 files and some other formats, depending on configuration.
Flash Player - if you're able to play YouTube videos in your web browser, you already have this - if not, install it at www.adobe.com. I mention this especially because the organ program "Pipedreams" recently upgraded its audio quality to 128 kbps mp3, but what isn't made clear is that it is the Flash Player that actually mediates the playback!

ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE OPTIONS - fun, somewhat geeky, but very versatile stuff:

VLC Media Player - (Windows, Mac, Linux) Very versatile player that deals with almost everything but RealMedia. It can save the media you're playing, stream it to another computer, and more. If you want to play aacPlus on a machine you can't install software on (e.g., your company machine), you can get this in a Windows "portable" version that will run off a flash drive. Like MPlayer below, it has a (complicated!) command-line interface to make automated captures easier.
MPlayer - (Windows, Mac, Linux) multi-format player that was first designed to work only from the "command line" interface (i.e., like your old DOS computer!). Don't laugh - in conjunction with Windows "scheduled tasks" (and its equivalent in Linux), this makes a nice free way to set up automatic recordings to disk of streaming Internet media, and is the way I archive lots of material! Importantly, it handles RealMedia (but there are some complications for the average user that I won't get into here...). Windows "portable" version is available also (with a standard point-and-click interface for ease of use).

Can you record these programs? Sure.

Possible, but least desirable, is an external recorder.
Better: put the audio right onto the computer hard drive as you listen! You'll need a recording program better than the built-in Windows stuff - a shareware item like GoldWave is one place to start. Many built-in computer sound systems will now permit you to send anything you're listening to right to the recording program - but if not, Virtual Audio Cable will make it possible.
Most desirable: capture the program directly to hard disk. Some of the software above does this, but not easily. This site gives many options, including some nice inexpensive, easy to use programs. (Me, I'm cheap and do it the hard way just for fun....)

Here are some of my approaches to recording Internet streams. It's geeky, it's the hard way, but it's free and it's fun.

*(Full disclosure: I work for Time Warner Cable, Milwaukee Division, servicing RoadRunner cable internet accounts, so I naturally lean toward cable - because I've seen it work perfectly, and it zooms along nicely for me with nary a glitch. And if by chance it doesn't, I fix it :-) )