Sound Files | Creating Sound Files
		Creating Sound Files Most newer personal computers (and many newer workstations) come out of the box with simple hardware and software for using a microphone to record your voice and other sounds. The sound quality of files created in this manner will not be very good, but this equipment does provide a means for you to create files with personally customized messages that you can include on your Web pages. Digitally recording and storing sounds of professional quality still requires equipment that is expensive and out of reach of today's average Web page creator. No doubt this situation will improve in the near future. Creating a Sound File with Windows You can make sound recordings on your PC if it has a microphone and the program Sound Recorder. Open Sound Recorder. This will pop up a recording panel with a set of buttons. Above the row of buttons is a window with a horizontal line through its middle. This window acts as a "level meter" when a recording is being made or played Choose "New" under the "File" menu. Click the button to start recording. Speak into the microphone. You should see oscillations in the level meter to indicate your sound is being recorded Click the button when you are finished. Click "Save As" under the "File" menu and choose a folder and file in which to store your sound. The resulting file is in WAV format. Linking to Your Sound File The sound file that you have just produced can be played from a browser link like <a href="file.wav">Sound File</a> if file.wav was the name of the file recorded above and the browser is configured to play sound files of this type. Streaming Sound A more efficient way to transmit sound on the web is to stream it, which means that the sound plays as it is being loaded, rather than waiting for the full file to download. In the next section we discuss one way of playing streaming sound. Also, the program Flash discussed later has the capability to create streaming sound files.