166 Chapter 7 Sound
QuickTime, Windows Media Player, and RealAudio Player simplified user access to all
forms of audio. Improvements in bandwidth provided through DSL, cable, and satellite
services also improved access to large digital sound files, as did advances in audio com-
pression. Particularly significant was the MP3 format, which dramatically reduced the size
of CD-quality audio and led to a revolution in the distribution of music.
There are two major strategies for delivering sound on the Internet: downloading and
streaming audio. Downloaded audio transfers a complete audio file from one computer
(the server) to another (the client) according to a set of file transfer protocols. Users await
the complete delivery of the file ...