Capability
|
Rating
|
Browser compatibility and percent of
browsers with Plug-in
|
Excellent.
|
Interactive sound design capabilities
|
Limited. Simply a file format for playback over PC (WAV) and
Macintosh (AIFF).
Button rollovers.
|
Software cost for encoding and streaming
|
Free.
Can export WAV or AIFF files from any standard audio editing
application including free Open Source audio editing applications.
|
Level of documentation and support
|
Limited/None.
|
Audio encoding and content generation
|
Easy.
Easy to export AIFF or WAV files from any standard audio editing
application.
|
Audio authoring and delivery
|
Easy.
Easy to place WAV or AIFF files on a standard web server for
downloading.
|
Audio fidelity and compression
|
Poor/None.
Large WAV and AIFF sound files sound good when uncompressed. Neither
offer elegant compression for high fidelity with small file sizes
over limited bandwidths.
|
Low-bandwidth performance
|
Poor.
WAV and AIFF work best as uncompressed 16-bit 44.1 kHz or 22.5 kHz
sound files and are thus not suited for playback in low-bandwidth
environments.
|
Server performance and quality of software tools for large-scale
streaming
|
Poor/None.
WAV and AIFF are merely audio file types -- not proprietary
formats such as RealMedia that include server-side technologies.
|