Music File Formats A MIDI file is like a music score: a set of instructions, which your sound card (your personal orchestra) plays and interprets in its own fashion using the sounds available to it. With any good-quality sound card, the result should be pleasing, but may be different from what I hear on my kit. An MP3 file is more like a home recording from radio or disc (you hear my personal orchestra and interpretation). But its fidelity is limited by the format and the practicable file size. The truly authentic sound is heard on two audio CDs I have made, which include all the music on this site. If you are that interested, you can e-mail me a postal address and I will send them to you with a modest invoice for expenses (say £5 in UK). If you click on the MIDI link for any title, the file will download more or less instantly, and should begin to play automatically on Windows Media Player or whatever. The MP3 files are bigger -- a few Mb. On a Broadband set-up they download very quickly. (You need a Media Player that can handle MP3, such as RealPlayer or all versions of Windows Media Player from 7 onwards.) If you are a telephone modem user, or are sharing bandwidth, you may have to wait longer for an MP3 file to come down the line. If you wish, you can download any of these MP3s to keep. To do this, right-click the Download/Save link button, select Save Target As, and follow the procedure on screen from there. The MP3 file will end up in the location you choose, and will play when you double-click it. (This method will work for the MIDI files as well, or for any download you wish to keep.) The truly authentic sound is encoded on my computer in WAVE format, which works out at about eleven Mb per minute ! WAVE files undergo another format conversion when tranferred to audio CD. |