Using sounds in your page

This is a very brief introduction to the use of sounds in Web pages. Only sound files that can be played by modern browsers, without helper applications, are covered here.

Sound file formats

See the Wikipedia for an overview of the various sound file formats, and this comprehensive list of audio file formats. The impact of MP3 on the Internet cannot be ignored. You can also read more about audio resources on the Web Web Virtual Library. We are only concerned in this tutorial with two types of file formats:

Riff waveform - .wav files used by Microsoft Windows.
SGI/Apple sound - .aiff or .aif

Both are supported by internal sound players in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

This tutorial will also not cover how to acquire existing sound files to use in your Web page. For sources in this topic and a collection of sound files in the Web go to the Sites with audio clips. You can use Switch basic free edition to convert between various sound formats.

Windows

Recording sounds
Your system needs to have a sound card for you to be able to record sounds, in addition to a microphone, in the case of voice sounds. See an example clicking in the button.
Recording sounds with a microphone is simple. Open the sound recorder application that comes with Windows, click on the microphone button and record the sound.
Including sound files in HTML
Including your sound file in HTML is like including any other link. For example, this HTML code: <a href="homer.aiff">homer</a> will play the homer.aiff sound file (converted from wav in Windows) when you click on the word homer, as shown here: homer.

This page is maintained by Al Bento who can be reached at abento@ubalt.edu. This page was last updated on May 16, 2007. Although we will attempt to keep this information accurate, we can not guarantee the accuracy of the information provided.

Using sounds in your page

Sound file formats

Windows

Recording sounds

Including sound files in HTML