I thought of a new way to determine how many people
actually were reading my column: I decided to hand out
chocolate to everyone who visited any of the four Web
sites that carry me.
Unfortunately, logistics won't allow that, plus I don't
have any chocolate; I ate it all. Instead, I thought
we would discuss music file types and get your opinion
on music taste while we're at it.
I have close to 800 MP3s on my home computer. Many
of them have come from my own CDs; some have come from
friends; and others have come from download sites. MP3
stands for MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3. These files can be
compressed much smaller than other types of audio files
by eliminating frequencies that cannot be heard by the
human ear. So if you are making CDs for your dog, you
may want to try a different format, and please, do not
use that Christmas song with the cats meowing "Jingle
Bells."
A WAV
file is another popular audio format file. WAVs were
made popular by IBM and Microsoft, and most browsers
are able to play these types of files. WAV files are
bulkier, but if you need to add short sound bytes on
your Web site, this might be the way to go. I thought
about adding a sound of me eating chocolate, but I'm
getting hungry just thinking about it, so nevermind.
MP3s are not the smallest audio files though. MIDI
files can be a fraction of the size, even though they
do not contain actual audio; they contain number sequences
that determine how the music is played. The big difference
is the sound quality of an MIDI file is dependent on
the output device. While most MP3s and WAV files sound
similar using different resources, MIDI files usually
sound worse using lower-end sound cards.
files are perhaps the biggest and are used for storing
and transmitting sampled sound. This format does not
support data compression, although there is an AIFF-Compressed
format that does support it. AIFF files can stand alone
but are more often used in Flash movies and other types
of media.
Well, if you've made it this far, we can talk about
the good stuff. I decided I would attempt to put together
a list of my favorite 100 songs of all time. Any genre,
any song, any artist is allowed. Country music is even
permissible. Before I unveil my list, which will appear
in an upcoming column, I'd like to hear your lists.
Now, if you think I'm going to read 100 songs from every
single person, you're crazy. But a list of 5 or 10,
no more than 25, would suffice. Or if you just want
to list your favorite song and list why it's your favorite,
that would be good too.
The grand prize winner will receive a year's supply
of Hershey's
Kisses. Wait, this isn't a contest. I guess the
only prize you will receive is having your list of songs
available for everyone to view. Remember to number your
list so I can also determine the most popular songs
of my readers.
to email your songs
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