Already the Internet has seen tremendous growth in the past few years. More and more within the past few years, new multimedia products have been introduced to interact with the World Wide Web.
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Real Audio 3.0 By Progressive Networks Available for Windows, Mac OS and some Unix systems |
Downloading such files can take a long time, especially when using a modem connection. A new product from Progressive Networks, called Real Audio 3.0, attempts to eliminate this problem.
Instead of receiving a whole sound file before playing it, the Real Audio player runs the sound file while it is being downloaded.
Using compression, sound from the sending computer is immediately heard on the receiving computer. This communication method between computers allows a home user to listen to live broadcasts. The Real Audio player is an effective Internet radio.
Several Web pages already offer broadcasts for the player. The best and most popular site into which people can incorporate Real Audio is called Audionet, located at http://www.audionet.com.
Audionet offers a large number of recorded compact discs from more than 30 categories, including alternative, hard-core, rap and country.
Although a few of the CDs are from popular groups such as Tool and Gravity Kills, most are from unknown or less popular bands.
Broadcasts from radio stations throughout the country that play all types of music can also be heard.
Sports fans will appreciate all of the live coverage of collegiate, professional and even high school sports that are not broadcast on Ann Arbor radio stations.
Users can select the sport and the date in which they are interested, and Audionet's Web page will display a listing of all the daily coverage of the sport. Several all-sports radio stations, such as Detroit's WDFN, also broadcast live on Audionet.
Another site delivering real-time music, The DJ, is located at http://www.thedj.com. The DJ offers several different categories of music, including alternative, classic rock, '80s, heavy rock, showtunes, hip hop and disco.
Unlike Audionet, The DJ plays a lot of the popular bands that are on broadcast radio playlists. However, it does offer Indie Rock, a category for new and unsigned rock bands.
A music site called Imusic offers music news, tour information, an on-line store and even more Real Audio music-related options.
Imusic offers a modern-rock channel, a classic-modern-rock channel and a club-music channel.
Beside providing a large amount of music in these categories, all of the Imusic channels have links that can benefit users who have a high-speed Internet connection. Those living in residence halls or campus-computing-site users can listen to compact disc quality music off of this site. Imusic is located at http://imusic.com.
The Real Audio player is a new product that may compete with broadcast radio in the future.
But, don't throw away your radio just yet. The Real Audio player has its share of problems.
On a modem connection, sound quality is much worse than FM radio. Also, when the Internet is especially busy, sound is unacceptably choppy.
However, as residential Internet connections become faster, real-time audio products will begin to compete with conventional radio for listeners.
Real Audio 3.0 can be downloaded at http://www.realaudio.com, and it is available for Windows, Mac OS and several versions of Unix.