[Indican Sound]

Hi guys

I am in the process of setting up a production service with a friend and we need a way of having demo audio on the website, preferably in lossless quality.

We can embed from soundcloud but it will only stream at mp3 128kbps and we'd really like to be able to use wavs so that the uadio demos are in the highest possible quality.

Any suggestions on how to do this?

[rinseit]

not all browsers support playing WAVs via HTML5 player.. so there are limitations. Flash fallback might fix it in other browser.

Another lossless option would be to use FLAC instead of WAV format. This would make the filesize considerably smaller and a better user experience for anyone on the site. There are some libraries which will help you play FLAC across different browsers.. but it still may not work in Internet Explorer.

Here's a link to the FLAC libs..
[Only registered and activated users can see links. Click here to register]

[Nystagmus]

Maybe check out the resources (if there are any) at [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click here to register]

As far as I can remember, they invented internet radio (streaming).
Maybe contact them and ask for advice.

[rinseit]

Originally Posted by Nystagmus

Maybe check out the resources (if there are any) at [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click here to register]

As far as I can remember, they invented internet radio (streaming).
Maybe contact them and ask for advice.

Shoutcast will not handle lossless audio (WAV/FLAC/AIFF).. but you can use ICECAST which will let you wrap FLAC in ogg wrapper.. I read it somewhere recently. That would be the better direction to put your research. This solution would be for an ongoing stream (not on-demand). So you'd be doing a radio-style thing with it..

[Only registered and activated users can see links. Click here to register]

[Nystagmus]

You are talking about streaming.
I don't think anybody anywhere streams lossless audio.
But ShoutCast can probably get you set up with 256 kbps MP3 or AAC streaming.
What you guys are talking about with the ICECAST stuff sounds pretty experimental, but more power to ya if you pull it off.

[rinseit]

yes, FLAC streaming might be experimental, but the OP did ask for lossless. I just checked an encoder I use for online broadcasting and it does have the OGG FLAC option. I never noticed it before but it's there.. so maybe this really is a viable option for lossless..

However, as for the OP's needs.. I think he wants an on-demand thing which will play back a specific file in the browser.. so.. I think the best answer for the OP at this moment is to create 2 files for each of his demos.

You would create two versions of the same file:
1 - OGG at 320kbps (or 256kbps)
1 - AAC at 320kbps. (or 256kbps)

The reason why you want OGG and AAC of the same demo is because not all browsers natively support both formats. Here is a list of the browser differences.

Internet Explorer 9.0+: .mp3, .aac
Chrome: .ogg, .mp3, .wav, .aac*
Firefox: .ogg, .wav
Safari: .mp3, .aac, .wav
Opera: .ogg, .wav

So, then after you create your two files you can embed them into your web page like this..

<audio controls>
  <source src="demo.aac" type="audio/mp4">
  <source src="demo.ogg" type="audio/ogg">
  Your browser does not support the audio element.
</audio>

The above code will fail-gracefully and play the file that the browser supports. If the browser supports neither, it will show the message "Your browser does not support the audio element".

HTH