[roch-pm] [Fwd: O'Reilly Releases "Designing Web Audio"]

Brian Mathis bmathis at directedge.com
Thu Jan 18 16:02:49 CST 2001


WEB AUDIO: THE NEXT WEB FRONTIER

"In 1996, my brother yelled out the studio window and said 'Hey, you
gotta come check this out!' I ran up the stairs and got my first earful
of RealAudio streaming over the web," says Josh Beggs, coauthor of the
newest O'Reilly release, "Designing Web Audio." "As artists and
producers we knew it was going to be revolutionary. Here we were in
start-up mode doing business on a shoestring dreaming about how we were
going to pay for CD's and packaging to publish our music... and even
more daunting find an audience... then kaboom... streaming audio over
the Internet... It was like we had just been handed the keys to a
global satellite broadcasting center. It was an epiphany moment."

Beggs' book, "Designing Web Audio" (O'Reilly, $34.95), explains how
digital audio is encoded from microphone to hard disk; how sound is
processed using compression and equalization; and how to turn audio
source material into a great soundtrack using loops and ambient
soundscapes. "Designing Web Audio" demystifies its subject with
informative step-by-step techniques for encoding, compression, and
streaming audio over the Web.

"I especially wanted to make sure the new techno tribe of digerati and
programmer heads had the benefit of understanding the connection
between sound and music and human interaction with technology and
emotions," says Beggs. "Audio is such a compelling part of our lives
and of how we define ourselves as humans belonging to a specific
culture. Specifically, audio plays a huge role in making media more
real and lifelike, especially our movie watching experience. Someday
soon audio will enjoy a similar role on the web."

The easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions on using the leading
audio formats will make "Designing Web Audio" an invaluable resource
for Web developers and individuals who want to stream their own music
over the Web. "'Designing Web Audio' looks to the future when audio
becomes a more integral part of the web not just a file format to be
stored on a server and downloaded," explains Beggs. "Our book is
written for the next era when surfing the web becomes much more like
watching a movie. 'Designing Web Audio' is the only book written for
the upcoming web golden age of rich media content."

"Designing Web Audio" is the most complete Internet audio guide on the
market. It's loaded with informative real-world case studies and
interviews with some of the world's leading audio and web producers. It
using the most popular web audio formats. This book also includes a
wealth of basic digital audio and sound wave theory, practical tips and
techniques for recording and editing audio for the Web, and an
invaluable buyer's guide to building an effective sound studio.


An article by Josh Beggs, "Web Mastering: The Art of Optimizing Sound
Files for Napster and the Internet" is available at:
http://web.oreilly.com/news/webaudio_1200.html

Chapter 5, Introduction to Streaming Media, is available free online
at:  http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sound/chapter/ch05.html

For more information about the book, including Table of Contents,
index, author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sound/

For a cover graphic in jpeg format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/1565923537.jpg


Designing Web Audio
By Josh Beggs & Dylan Thede
January 2001
ISBN 1-56592-353-7, 398 pages, $34.95, Includes CD-ROM
order at oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
http://www.oreilly.com

# # #

O'Reilly is a registered trademark of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. All
other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

-- 
Brian Mathis
Direct Edge
http://www.directedge.com

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