On 20-Feb-97 Chris Fahey wrote:
quoted 10 lines What's the point of having pre-recorded RealAudio tracks? Isn't>What's the point of having pre-recorded RealAudio tracks? Isn't
>RealAudio meant for live broadcast?
>
>If I want to hear pre-recorded stuff that I get from the web, why can't
>I just download a full-quality 44/16/stereo WAV file, maybe
>zip-compressed, and listen to that? That is, instead of listening to a
>crappy RealAudio file which not only sounds bad but breaks up in heavy
>net traffic?
>
>Does anyone know what the theory is behind it?
you're going to get a billion replies:
the win for real audio is that it STREAMS. meaning you can hit "listen" and
start hearing stuff *immediately*. yes, my original file sounds much
better but it's 65 megabytes large and you would have to download the entire
thing in order to hear it.
WAV and AIFF do not stream.
MPEG, on the other hand, sounds better than realaudio and CAN be streamed, but
the company that makes the software (xing) is, while technologically adept,
very bad at marketing... so they are going to die and realaudio will win by
default. (wah)
the new realaudio 3.0 protocols actually sound pretty good if you have enough
network bandwidth to handle dual-ISDN stereo...
Jon Drukman jsd@gamespot.com
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