Capability
|
Rating
|
Browser compatibility and percent of
browsers with Plug-in
|
Excellent.
|
Interactive sound design capabilities
|
Limited. Format is designed for song compression and to allow
electronic devices to communicate, not as a multimedia authoring
environment.
Button rollovers.
|
Software cost for encoding and streaming
|
Free to $100+.
If you already have MIDI files, you can post them to a web server for
free. To create your own MIDI, files you will need to purchase a MIDI
editor such as Vision or Cubase.
|
Level of documentation and support
|
Limited/None.
|
Audio encoding and content generation
|
Difficult.
Must have familiarity with MIDI authoring environments such as
Vision, Cubase, Performer, etc.
|
Audio authoring and delivery
|
Easy.
Easy to place MIDI files on a standard web server for playback.
|
Audio fidelity and compression
|
Fair.
Note, since MIDI is not a digital audio format but a form of music
notation, audio fidelity is dependent on the user's sound card
and sound engine.
|
Low-bandwidth performance
|
Outstanding
|
Server performance and quality of software tools for large-scale
streaming
|
Poor/Fair -- HTTP pseudo-streaming from a standard web server.
|