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by Charlie Morris
You want to put your music on the Web. You want a piece of the unlimited musical frontier that now stands open, free for the taking. You want anyone, anywhere in the world, to be able to listen to and/or download your recorded music over the Internet. How do you make this happen?
June 1999
There are various Web sites that allow artists to post their tunes for public listening, sale or both. Some require you to submit your music in a particular format, while some will make conversions for you, perhaps for a fee. If you have your own Web site of course, you can offer your music there too. In either case, the conversion process is the same.
Here's whatcha gotta do:
- Get a recording together, preferably on CD.
- Get it into your computer, either by "extracting" it from an audio CD or by recording it from an analog source with an audio card.
- Edit and convert to the Web-friendly format(s) of your choice.
If you create your music (or whatever) in the digital realm, then you're already halfway there. See The Tapeless Studio for information on how to make high-quality recordings with your computer. Call it "hard-disk recording," or "non-linear" recording, or whatever you like, but the final product is a computer file, usually a .wav file in the PC world, or an .aiff file in Mac-land.
Any of these files can of course simply be embedded in a Web page (using the EMBED tag). This may be appropriate for a short sound effect, but for music or other program audio, you'll want to use either a streaming audio file such as RealAudio, or a good-quality compressed format, such as MP3. Which approach to use depends on the intended use of the file.
A streaming file (RealAudio is the most popular, but there are other formats) is designed for instant gratification. The user doesn't have to wait for the whole file to download - it starts to play shortly after downloading begins. A selection of any length can be "streamed" from the modem directly to the user's sound card. One nifty thing about this is that continuous live broadcasts can be done. Web "radio stations" are wonderful. You can listen to your favorite station anywhere in the world.
The downside of streaming formats is the quality. RealAudio over the Web sounds okay for speech, but passable at best for music. The boosters claim that the quality is similar to that of AM radio, because the dynamic range is the same, but that's like saying that Forbes and Mother Jones are similar magazines because they're printed on the same size paper. Poor digital audio sounds very different from poor analog audio, so let's just say that the streaming formats sound pretty rough, and leave it at that. There are, however, a few things you can do to make your RealAudio files sound as good as possible, which I'll address in a future column.
Until bandwidth gets a good bit fatter, those of us who want to listen to the latest hot bands in a good quality format will have to download audio files the old-fashioned way. There are, however, some very nifty compression schemes that can make a reasonably-sized file sound pretty darn good. The most popular of these "codecs" at the moment is called MP3 (and soon MP4).
A .mp3 file compresses audio using a lossy compression scheme. This means that some of the original data is lost in the compression, so a .mp3 file is not truly the equivalent of CD quality. However, the compression is done in an intelligent way, so that the frequencies that get removed are only the ones that would be masked by other frequencies anyway (or something like that). The bottom line is that it sounds fairly close to CD quality, and the file sizes are much smaller than a decent-quality uncompressed file would be.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. What if your tunes exist in some archaic, physical format like a CD, or (our condolences) cassette tape? How do you convert them into computer files? The express train to the Web is to create .mp3 files with a "ripper," a software package that can convert audio tracks on a CD into standard computer files. The techies like to call it "digital audio extraction," but "ripping" has a better sound. Lots of shareware rippers are available. I quite like CDH Media Wizard. This can take tunes directly from an audio CD or from audio files on a hard drive, and convert them to .mp3 files. It can even batch-convert several at a time, so you can do an audio CD in one go. How easy can you get?
Sadly, not all CD-ROM drives support "digital audio extraction." If yours refuses to be ripped, then you're in the same boat as the poor souls whose masterpieces exist only on cassette tape. You'll have to run a line from your audio CD player, tape deck, turntable, wax cylinder or whatever, into your computer's audio card, and record the tunes one by one. You can get fine results this way if you have a good quality audio card.
Notice I say "audio card" instead of "sound card." A sound card is a general-purpose consumer card that includes a synthesizer and MIDI converter in addition to audio record/playback capabilities. An audio card is designd for audio recording, not games, and if you're converting your music to distribute on the Web, you need a good one. Yes, you can record with consumer audio cards, and the best of them (Sound Blaster or Turtle Beach) produce decent-quality recordings, but they're noise city compared to pro audio cards like the Card D+, or even the value-priced Darla (see Audio Hardware Reviews). This is your music we're talking about. If you can't afford a good card, try calling some of the local project studios. They'll probably transfer your tunes to the computer for a small fee.
Any one of dozens of available audio software packages can be used to transfer existing recordings to computer files. Which one you choose depends on what your main musical activities are. See our software reviews for recommendations for multitrack, MIDI and audio editing packages. If all you need to do is transfer existing stereo recordings to computer files, you might choose Sound Forge, which has only 2-tracks, but the most extensive audio editing features in the biz.
If you're transferring from a high-quality format like CD or DAT, all you'll probably need to do is record the tunes, and check to make sure the beginnings and endings are tight. Sometimes a little noise can get added between the time you begin recording and the time the source starts playing. If so, you'll need to do a little snipping.
If you're coming from a noisy medium like LP or tape, then you'll need to spend a little more time editing. Someone who knows what they're doing with a tool like Sound Forge or Cool Edit can really do a lot to make a low-quality source file sound better.
A noise reduction algorithm can cut down the hiss from tapes, as well as the snap crackle and pop of platters. Sound Forge and Cool Edit both have noise reduction features, and there's also the stand-alone noise reduction package DART, which is well worth looking at for those interested in converting their LP libraries. Noise reduction tools work by making a "noiseprint," or sample of the noise you want to remove, perhaps by sampling a bit of silence at the beginning of a track. Everything in the file that sounds like the noise is removed, hopefully leaving the good stuff. These tools can produce great results if used carefully, but don't try to remove all the tape hiss, or your recording will sound dull and soulless.
A little judicious EQ can perk up a track from a mediocre source but again, a little goes a long way. If your final product will be a RealAudio file, check their site for the latest tips, because there are some EQ tweaks that can improve the final quality.
The final step in editing your audio file is normalizing, which basically means optimizing the level. This works a little differently than with analog recording. When recording digitally, you must never, ever clip. Any peak above 0 will result in a nasty click or worse. The name of the game is to get your highest peak as close to 0 as you can without cracking it. Normalizing simply raises the level by whatever amount is necessary to achieve this boon. If your music has a few really high peaks, you may wish to apply a tiny bit of compression before or during the normalizing process, but as always, don't overdo it!
Okay, you've got all your tunes converted to computer audio files, just as pretty as you please. Now to convert 'em to a Web-friendly format, and get 'em slapped up on a Web page. By the way, it doesn't make much difference whether you're on a PC or a Mac. Sound Forge can open Mac .aiff files, and some of the Mac editors can open Windows .wav files - various shareware converters are also available. The Web formats .mp3 and RealAudio are pretty universal, with encoders and players available for many platforms.
MP3 files can be created using any of various converters (see above), and can then be posted on a Web page for downloading just like any other file. Your server will probably have to be configured to recognize MP3 as a MIME type, so you'll have to contact your hosting service to do that for you. If your site is hosted by one of those "consumer" hosting services, you may be out of luck. Any decent commercial hosting service, however, should have no problem with this.
Sound Forge can save files directly in RealAudio format, or you can get the RealAudio encoder. Like MP3 files, they can be downloaded, FTPed, or emailed to your pals. If you want to deliver them in streaming format, however, your hosting service has to have the RealAudio server up and running. Most larger hosting services offer RealAudio, but charge an extra monthly fee for it.
Getting bleeding-edge formats like this to work properly on your Web site can be a pretty complex subject, to put it nicely, so we'll leave more details for a future column. Of course, RealAudio and MP3 are hardly the only formats worth considering. RealMedia lets you combine streaming audio and MIDI, and Liquid Audio is an up-and-comer. Another vein to mine in future columns is how to entice a person or two actually to pay you, either for downloading files, or for CDs by mail-order. And how to protect your copyrights? To paraphrase Melville, this column is but a draught, nay, but the draught of a draught! Oh, time, cash and patience!
What's your opinion on the online music distribution revolution? Or perhaps you have a question. Express yourself on our Online Music Discussion List.
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