What is RealAudio?
	What does "real-time" mean?
	How does it work?
	What do I need to play RealAudio?
	Why do I have little ".ram" files on my disk after playing RealAudio?
	How long can a RealAudio sound file be?
	Could someone play "live" sound using RealAudio?
	What if I want to listen to just part of a sound file?
	Is the sound quality good enough?
	What is the RealAudio Plug-In?
	What if I have more questions?

What is RealAudio?

RealAudio is a system developed by Progressive Networks, Inc. of Seattle for letting sound be played real-time across the Internet.
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What does "real-time" mean?

When sound is recorded on a personal computer, it is stored in a disk file with a special format (some of these are .WAV or .AU or .AIFF). These sound files can be transmitted across the Internet, but the entire file must be transmitted before you can play it. At typical network speeds (28.8), this could mean that you would have to spend 10-15 minutes downloading a 3-minute audio segment before being able to listen to it.

RealAudio lets you start playing a sound as it is being transmitted; there is no need to download the entire file before listening to it. You listen to it in "real" time, while it is being downloaded. In fact, the file itself is never downloaded to your disk.
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How does it work?

The RealAudio folks found a way to compress sound files beyond what had been used before. RealAudio sound files are up to 10 times smaller than typical sound files. In addition, they developed software that lets the viewer's computer (the client) connect with the Internet computer (the server) to download and play the audio while the viewer is doing other things (like surfing the Web).
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What do I need to play RealAudio?

You need the RealAudio Player software. It is available for Windows, Macintosh, and Unix systems, and it is free. You just need to download it and install it.

You also need a standard TCP/IP connection to the Internet. If you are using the Netscape or Internet Explorer browsers, for example, you can play RealAudio. If you are using the America Online (AOL) browser, you may or may not be able to. (AOL users can check out the RealAudio FAQ for AOL. Windows AOL users can use RealAudio, but it may take some setup. Mac AOL users are out of luck.)
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Why do I have little ".ram" files on my disk after playing RealAudio?

When you click on a link to start playing a RealAudio sound, a small file is transmitted and stored on your hard disk. This small file tells the RealAudio Player software where to find the sound. It remains on your hard disk when you have finished listening to the sound. (In fact, if you're connected to the network, you can double-click this file and launch the RealAudio Player to listen to the audio file again. You don't even need to be looking at the Web.)
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How long can a RealAudio sound file be?

As long as you want.
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Could someone play "live" sound using RealAudio?

Yes. Concerts, radio programs, and other broadcasts have been transmitted over RealAudio. During the NBA finals between the Chicago Bulls and the Seattle Supersonics, for example, if you had RealAudio you could listen to the game as called on radio by the Chicago announcers, the Seattle announcers, or the ESPN announcers.

Most RealAudio sound is stored on disk for downloading on request. It takes a special setup to transmit live, but live RealAudio is available. See the RealAudio home page for links to live broadcasts.
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What if I want to listen to just part of a sound file?

The RealAudio Player lets you start and stop playing, as well as jump forward or backward in the file to play from a different point.
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Is the sound quality good enough?

As with all sound reproduction, the more sound information that can be transmitted, the higher the quality of the sound. It is possible to encode a RealAudio file so that it requires the listener to have only a 14.4 modem connection, or to encode it so that it requires a 28.8 connection.

In most cases, 14.4 quality is perfectly adequate for listening to a speaker, so that is typically the level we encode. In that way, we don't cut off those listeners who don't have 28.8 modems yet. You can tell this because the Player will display "Playing 14.4 network stream..."

If an audio requires higher quality for some reason (maybe it has music which needs to be heard at higher fidelity), we will encode it at 28.8. The Player will then indicate that.
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What is the RealAudio Plug-In?

For most RealAudio, the RealAudio Player program is launched to control the playing. A Netscape plug-in has been created to allow a RealAudio segment to be embedded in the middle of a Web page and played without having to launch the Player as a separate program.

We haven't set up any pages that use the plug-in, since not all browsers can handle it.
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What if I have more questions?

Check out the RealAudio Web site FAQ.
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