Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
The golden days of radio are behind us, but a new era in audio broadcasting on the Internet is just beginning.
At least two companies have developed software for the Internet that lets you listen to audio, such as a news broadcast or a promotional sound clip, without first having to download the audio file to your hard drive. Developers are using these audio compression/delivery solutions to develop World Wide Web pages that you can see and hear. By the end of this year, more than 100 radio stations could be using these solutions to broadcast over the Internet.
Sending sound over the Internet is certainly nothing new. However, Unix AU, Mac AIFF, and Windows WAV sound files, which typically measure 1 MB or larger, are voracious consumers of network bandwidth. Popular early I
nternet talk-radio experiments, such as Carl Malamud's half-hour "Geek of the Week" broadcast, typically required 15 MB. It was possible to listen to "Geek of the Week" in real time, but only if you had a 64-Kbps or faster connection.
Two new audio compression/delivery systems, RealAudio from Progressive Networks (Seattle, WA) and StreamWorks from Xing Technology (Arroyo Grande, CA), allow users with slower Internet connections to enjoy audio broadcasting. RealAudio and StreamWorks both enable Web users to listen to audio without having to download a sound file first.
The quality of sound that StreamWorks and RealAudio provide will vary depending on your network connection, but you can typically expect AM-radio quality. RealAudio is designed to give you 16-bit, 8-kHz sound. At worst, you'll think you're listening to an across-the-border AM radio station. At best, it sounds like a nearby AM station.
The quality of a StreamWorks broadcast can improve with more bandwidth. Xing Technology says t
hat users with 9600-bps to 14.4-Kbps connections can expect AM-quality radio, but at 128 Kbps the quality of the broadcast can scale all the way up to CD-quality stereo sound. StreamWorks is based on MPEG, so it can also compress video and allow Web users with ISDN connections to view full-motion video.
One application for Internet audio is to enable radio stations to reach a wider geographic audience. But there are a lot of other applications for Internet audio besides radio broadcasting (see the table
"Internet Audio Applications"
), including some that haven't been thought of yet.
-- On-demand broadcasting
(e.g., for following local sports
teams or political issues from anywhere in the world)
-- Corporate information
systems
-- Web kiosks
-- Long-distance
training and education
-- Audio libraries
Radio Comes to Cyberspace
