Tag: PC

Ipod And Other MP3 Audio Books

IPod and MP3 players are the new rage, almost every one posses them and are hooked on to these devices. It is no wonder as the busy lifestyle we lead, we cant help but squeeze out time to listen to music on the way to work or when we are exercising or are out on a walk. No wonder that audio book sales are soaring. The combination of audio books and ipods are now making it possible for people to listen to their books on tape where ever they want.

The demand for ipods can be very well understood by the sale statistics of apple. Apple and its many retail partners managed to sell 88 iPods per minute in the year 2006 which totaled 46,432,000 iPods sold. This figure comes down to more then 1 iPod sold per second!! This is absolutely a mind boggling figure. The festive season from October and December are the busiest business season of the year.

Ipod Audiobook sales have been on a rise. In the year 2005, the audio book sales totaled a figure of $871 million. This rise in the sales of Audio books sales is due to the rise in popularity of downloadable audio books. This demand of downloadable audio books represented 9 percent of total audio book sales in 2005, although this number may seem too small but if you look closely,, it is a 50 percent increase in sales from the year 2004.and most likely the trend shall follow in the years to come.

Almost all new cars are now capable of playing digital audio files; this is the reason why the sales of audio files are expected to increase. The statistics shows that 97 million Americans drive work everyday, all these people are stuck in traffic jam almost everyday, these people can easily listen to music in their cars. We can also listen to our ipod audio books when we are exercising, or while walking home or to our place of work. In addition to this there are several audio books that can easily help you fall asleep or help you to relax.

Many business men love to listen to motivational stuff on their ipod audio books, there are also students who listen to literature on their ipods and they can also learn a new language with the help of ipod audio books.

It is easy to download your audio book from the Internet. All you have to do is select your title, make the secure purchase, and then you are all set to download. The download takes seconds to a few minutes depending on the size of the file on most computers. If you have a dialup, the download process is bound to be slower, to overcome this handicap you can select the smallest size file for each title. These files are not of a very good quality, but it still sounds as good as any audio book CD that you buy from the store. Once you are done with downloading your audio book, you can play it on your PC, or burn it to disc, or you can even load it to your iPod or MP3 player.

Cut Your Audio Learning Time In Half By Speed Listening

Did you know you can speed-listen to 60 minutes of audio in 30 minutes or less with full comprehension using special speed-listening software? You can even go faster with a little practice and blast through an hour of audio learning in 20 minutes or less saving you hours and hours of time.

If this is your first exposure to the concept of speed-listening to your audio learning you may be a bit skeptical like I was. You may also have doubts speed-listening to audio learning materials will work for you too. I can’t blame you.

The first time I heard about speed-listening I was skeptical and doubtful it was for real too because the only faster audio I ever heard was Alvin and the Chipmunks at Christmas time or when as a kid I sped up the old record player for kicks!

Using FasterAudio speed-listening software is the secret to effective speed-listening because it speeds up your audio without changing the pitch so the voices sound normal just faster. This is why you can accelerate your audio 2X and faster with full comprehension.

What’s cool about using the FasterAudio software is you can convert your audio files into an accelerated format Mp3 which is easily transferred to your iPod or any Mp3 playing device. This lets you maximize your audio learning time whenever you are away from your PC or Mac running Parallels.

Getting Started With Speed-Listening

When I first tried FasterAudio speed-listening software I set the audio to 125% of regular speed. After just a few minutes at 125% I accelerated my audio learning up to 1.5 X of regular speed. Not only was I able to listen to the accelerated audio with ease, but was doing so with full comprehension. It was easy and fun. Really amazing.

Then I did the math. At 1.5X regular audio speed you save 20 minutes for every 60 minutes of audio learning, but I wanted to listen faster. After about 1hr of listening at 1.5X I went to 1.75X of regular speed. It took another hour or so to get used to listening at 1.75X speed with ease.

My goal was to cut my audio learning time in half so over the next few days I used FasterAudio to slowly increase the speed of the audios I was listening to. It wasn’t long before I hit 2X speed and reached my goal. Then I heard about people who speed-listen at up to 4.5X of regular speed. This motivated and challenged me to keep pushing my listening speed faster and faster. I have since reached 3.5X of normal listening speed and continue to push myself.
That said, 1.5X of normal speed is quick and easy to reach and will save you hours of valuable time if you listen to audiobooks, podcasts, home study programs etc.

Bottom line your first goal should be to get comfortable with 1.5X (most people have no trouble reaching that) and then work at doubling your listening speed so you cut your audio learning time in half. Then keep pushing yourself to go faster.

You can check out FasterAudio speed-listening software at this link and experience speed-listening for yourself live on the website.

Audio Streaming – How To Succeed

Streaming multimedia is a form of multimedia, which itself is media that uses different forms of content. Combinations of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactivity content forms are typical modes of multimedia presentation.

The streaming variant is being sent, in a continuous flow, to the user of the content by the streaming provider. In this context, examples of the content stream include audio and video.

The streaming refers to the method of delivery of the content flow rather than to the nature of the content. Apart from telecommunications networks, most systems for delivering content are either streaming, such as radio and television, or non-streaming, such as audio CDs, video cassettes, and books. The term ‘to stream’ means, quite simply, to deliver media in this particular manner.

History

The first attempts were made, in mid-20th century, to display media on computers. However, due to the high cost and very limited capabilities of computer hardware at that time, development did not proceed at any pace for many years.

By the 1990s, personal computers had become sufficiently powerful to display a variety of media forms. The main technical problems associated with streaming at that time were:

Having sufficient CPU power, which refers to the central processor, that can execute computer programmes, and also bus bandwidth, which is the capacity of the system to transfer data over a connection, in order to support the required rates of data flow.

Creating low latency, which allows delays too swift for human detection between an input being processed and the corresponding output providing real time characteristics, interrupt paths in the OS, or operating system, to prevent buffer underrun, which occurs when a buffer, which is a storage device used to compensate for a difference in rate of flow of data between devices used to communicate between two devices or processes, is fed with data at a lower speed than the data is being read from it.

However, computer networks had still not developed fully, and so media content was normally processed over non-streaming channels, such as CD ROMs.

Between the late 1990s and into the next century, there were significant advances in the internet, such as:

An increase in network bandwidth, especially in the last mile, which referred to the final leg of delivering connectivity from the communications provider to a customer.

Greater access to networks, especially the internet.

The application of standard protocols and formats, such as TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML.

Significantly greater commercialisation of the Internet.

With the advent of powerful home computers and advanced operating systems, these advances in computer networking enabled streaming media to become a practical and affordable proposition for the nation at large.

Another advance was the introduction of stand-alone Internet radio devices, which are hardware devices that receive and play audio from internet radio stations or the user’s PC or other embedded media servers. For the first time, this provided listeners with the ability to listen to audio streams without the requirement of a PC.

In general, multimedia content is large, so media storage and transmission costs are still significant. In order to compensate for this, media is generally compressed, such as in a ZIP file format, which provides compression, and also acts as an archiver, storing many source files in a single destination output file, for both storage and streaming.

A media stream can be either on demand or live. In the case of on demand streams, the content is stored on a server for long periods of time, and is available for transmission on request. Live streams, on the other hand, are only available at one particular time, such as in a video stream of a live sporting event.

Mp3 & Digital Audio Files Can Be Exchange Using Bluetooth

Marlene Deidre

Bluetooth is a technology that uses radio frequency over a short range. It is designed to provide a way to transmit signals in an inexpensive but reliable way without the use of wires. The Bluetooth technology eliminates the need to use a cable to connect nearby personal gadgets like cell phones, notebooks, headphones, MP3 & digital audio devices. It delivers secure voice and data transmission, creating a host of useful applications.

One such application of the Bluetooth technology is wireless connection between audio systems such as MP3 & digital audio devices. This application is indeed very useful. For instance, if you want to listen to music while you are on the move such as when jogging/running or working out at the fitness gym, using a regular music player and headphone combination would mean constraints to your movement because you need to watch out for the cable connecting the player with the headphone. With a Bluetooth MP3 & digital audio device, you can are free to move while listening to your favorite tunes.

Likewise, a Bluetooth MP3 & digital audio device makes a great home entertainment gadget. Stay connected with your PC with a Bluetooth headset you will not disturb your housemates and you can walk around the house or relax in another room while using your home PC as an entertainment center.

Learning the Technical Details

The standard bandwidth for a transmission device to deliver audio with CD quality is 1411.2 kbps but the highest-level bit rate that Bluetooth can achieve is only 721 kbps.
To solve this lack of bandwidth, Bluetooth mandated the use of Sub-band Codec that Philips developed which has no royalty charge and is low-complex. The Codec ensures that a Bluetooth MP3 & digital audio player will reduce the size of a CD-quality audio file to fit into the bandwidth of Bluetooth and then the receiving headset or speaker will decompress the streamed data prior to playing it out.

The specific procedures that Bluetooth technology uses to stream audio content through Bluetooth MP3 & digital audio players are defined in the Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile or A2DP. A device that implements this particular profile will be able to function either as the source of streaming audio (the music player) or the sink of the streaming audio (headset or speakers). The Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile is also the basis for maintaining quality of service and the high-quality transmission of audio content.

Conclusion

The use of Bluetooth to deliver audio wirelessly has indeed revolutionized the audio industry and more applications of digital audio via Bluetooth are expected to be discovered, creating a fast-evolving and more interesting mobile and aural experience to end users.

Please check out articletechie.com for useful tips and info about Personal Technology and Software.

Books on Audio

Books on audio are a breakthrough that made reading a lot more interesting. You don’t need to allocate time in going to libraries if you have researches or essays to write. You don’t even have to rush work just to catch up an open bookstore or squeeze in a book sale.

Having books on audio made life convenient since all you have to do is download a book from numerous books on audio offering site, and you’re all set to go and start listening to that favorite book of yours, be it for a school report, a work research material or basically just to kill time and spend it listening to books on audio instead of reading an actual hard bound textbook.

Driving across town and going for a holiday vacation trip may seem endless but having books on audio, these trips will be a lot speedier since it takes your boredom away by listening to it rather than just sit and do nothing at all.

How do you get books on audio? Simple. All you have to do is look for a site online that offers audio book downloading services. Sign up for a trial membership and get your free books on audio. Some audio book downloading sites offer 2-3 trial titles. If you like it, then you can keep it and continue on your membership. If you are somewhat dissatisfied then you can simple cancel it without getting charged of even a single cent.

Downloading books on audio may not always be available, so you have to keep a keen eye on whatever books on audio is available for a free download. There are about 50,000 files available for you to download. Books on audio can be loaded on your Mp3, iPod, PC, or even your mobile phone.

You can take it anywhere you are and can listen to it while doing something else. Cleaning the yard has never been this enjoyable with a book on audio loaded on your portable player and plugged into your ears. Exercising with a book on audio on your player hits two tasks, staying fit and absorbing information. So what are you waiting for? Get your own books on audio now!