Re: TECH: software for recording your voice

Sally Caves scripsit:

> What's the difference between a .ra file and a .wav file?
> Do I have any control over this extension?
Sound is essentially one-dimensional: if you know the intensity
at every moment, for sufficiently short values of "moment"
(for CD-quality, about every 1/100,000 of a second is enough),
then you know it all.  Wav files just record this intensity,
sampling rather less often than CD recorders, but still often;
that's why they're so freaking big.  RealAudio uses highly
proprietary compression tricks to make the data smaller,
including throwing away some of the quality.

MIDI files, on the other hand, record *notes*: they contain
instructions like "play a quarter-note worth of A# below
Middle C".  As such, they are far more compact, but can only
record instrumental sounds.  Windows 9x has built-in ways
of playing these.

> Why is it that RealPlayer won't let me listen to a "midi"
> file?
Because they're irrelevant to its purpose.


--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin