Rates RealVideo the highest in providing good quality compression at lower bandwidths. Making waves with streaming audio . Discusses two of the most popular streaming audio formats available, with emphasis on RealAudio from RealNetworks, Shockwave Audio from Macromedia. Describes how RealNetworks products have evolved into a complete broadcasting platform. Shockwave Audio, still an adjunct to Macromedia's program Director, is less versatile, but Shockwave Audio can be added to web pages without using Director.
Illustrations show how streaming audio works over the web.
Prick up your ears and listen . At high modem speeds, the audio quality of RealAudio, Shockwave and Liquid Audio are roughly comparable. Bugs still exist in free encoders and players from RealAudio and Shockwave. While they produce admirably small file sizes, audio quality is poor. No consensus about which streaming format to use has yet been reached.