Hello Dan, I realized part of my message was unclear.I might be wrong but I think the ubiquitous method to play sound files in a web-browser is, to date, based on Flash. This is the only third-party multimedia plugin that is available on almost all computers (and plateforms). Now if you download an MP3 file on your machine, of course there's gazillions of (free) software that will let you read them, not disputing that.
Now, as Flash is more-or-less set to disappear, especially on portable devices, a lot of people have turned to HTML5. There you really rely on what the browser natively supports. Again, I may be wrong but to my knowledge, while IE, Chrome and Safari support MP3 (and not OGG, apart for Chrome), Firefox and Opera support OGG (and not MP3). They all support WAV though (well, except IE but who cares). So if compatibility is to be maintained with all three main browsers, then both MP3 and OGG should be used. That's what I wanted to suggest.
As for Nick's suggestion about mp3HD, I think this is a bit dangerous because only players (and readers) supporting mp3HD will read the lossless part. The others will only read the compressed part. So it might be a bit tricky to know which part is actually used.
-Etienne On 14/09/2012 09:55, Dan Stowell wrote:
Robert,It's not clear to me whether you're asking about short-term presentation or long-term archival. I think Etienne's response covers the important points for short-term (although I would point out that MP3 has an overwhelming critical mass of usage, and certainly doesn't rely on flash for playback!).For archival, the "TC04" archiving standard (IASA 2009) would recommend that you aim for 24bit / 96 kHz BWAV (BWAV, "Broadcast WAV", is related to ordinary WAV, with some small tweaks to the format for scaleability).Best Dan On 13/09/12 15:54, Robert Zatorre wrote:Dear list In an effort to enhance the Frontiers in Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience journal, we would like to enable sounds files to be uploaded for reviewers to be able to hear the stimuli used in a given experiment. Eventually we would also like to have a means of having these sound files embedded directly into the online journal article so that readers can hear the stimuli used. (Of course this could apply not only to stimuli, but also to other sound files that are part of the study, such as recorded vocalizations, speech or musical sounds produced under some experimental conditions, and so forth) My question for you all is what file formats do you think we would need to support? The two obvious ones are wav and mp3, but perhaps there are others that you may think are important or that have some advantages that should also be considered. Thank you for your thoughts. PS feel free to send me your comments directly -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Robert J. Zatorre, Ph.D. Montreal Neurological Institute 3801 University St. Montreal, QC Canada H3A 2B4 phone: 1-514-398-8903 fax: 1-514-398-1338 e-mail: robert.zatorre@xxxxxxxxx web site: www.zlab.mcgill.ca