This guide will give you the basics to playing sounds on HotWired.
This help file assumes the reader has a basic familiarity with the
Web and Web browsers such as
NCSA's Mosaic or Mosaic Communications' NetScape. If you need more help with the Web or net basics, check the
NCSA home page or HotWired's other help files.In Soundz, we have two types of sounds--ones that loop and ones that don't. A looping sound plays from beginning to end and then repeats. A non-looping sound plays once from beginning to end unless you instruct your player to play it again. Sounds which do not loop have only one file type--".aiff". Sounds which do loop have two types--".aiff" and ".mov". If you can play Quicktime movies, you can play looped sounds smoothly. Click on the .mov soundfiles to download looped sounds. If you can't play Quicktime movies, it still may be possible to play looped sounds, depending on whether your sound player can loop .aiff soundfiles. Some players do not loop continuously (such as Sound Machine) and there is an audible gap at the loop point. This problem is a function of the player.
To play the sounds, click on the appropriate icon (depending on whether your system supports Quicktime files). Your browser will call up the external player you have set up in your browser's Preferences or Settings. For Macintosh, you can simply use the default settings which should be preset to use Sound Machine for playing .aiff files and Simple Player for playing .mov files. For other platforms, make sure you have set your browser to call up the appropriate helper application in the Preferences or Settings file. Below is a linked list of helper applications needed to play HotWired sounds. Check NCSA's home page for updates of much of this software and information on helper applications for any other platform.
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Application: WHAM: an .au and .aiff sound player
Here it is: WHAM
Platform: Macintosh
Application: Sound Machine: an .au and .aiff sound player
Here it is: Sound Machine
Platform: Macintosh
Application: Simple Player: a quicktime and .mov player
Here it is: Simple Player
Platform: Unix
Application: XPlayGizmo: an .aiff sound player
Here it is: XPlayGizmo
Platform: SGI
Application: Xanim: an .aiff sound player
Here it is: xanim