What is the best website audio player??

[7+1]

Hi guys.. i am currently upgrading my website and am about to put up my reel on my site..

I am a bit uneducated with total specs.. I am looking for the best "Sounding" (quality) audio player.

One that can at least stream 16/44.1.. and preferably @ 24 BIT.

Thoughts? and thank you in advance.

[7+1]

Really? no one has an opinion? wow...


BUMP please for a second try..

[muziksculp]

I think most audio players that you can imbed into your website play mp3 format. (I'm not 100% sure about this, but that's my observation so far.)

Vimeo's seems to have some good audio, if you have any video, or slide show to accompany your music, you can imbed their video/audio into your website. But it is still using an audio codec. (better sounding than Youtube's audio coded). Soundcloud is another option, but still is an mp3 player, which seems to also degrade audio quality.

There was recently some buzz about Apple opening up the Apple Lossless codec to third party developers. The Apple Lossless codec would be great to use, but I don't have a clue if this will be the new standard of high-quality audio players for the web., and if 3rd-party developers are moving it forward in terms of actual implementation, and development of audio-players for the Apple Lossless format. (which imho. has great sonic quality, when compared to mp3, and very close to non-compressed audio.) I

The other option would be to just put your non-compressed 16-bit or 24-bit WAV/AIFF file for direct streaming or download on your website. (You might want to look more into this option, since audio fidelity/dynamic range is something you are concerned about).

I wish I could help you further, but that's what I can contribute to your question based on my current knowledge of what's available on the web.

Hope this is somewhat helpful.

Cheers,
Muziksculp

[tonemaker]

You may want to do some research on the AAC codec. It has been considered to be superior to MP3/MPEG codecs in terms of sound quality for equivalent bitrate in many cases. Some internet radio stations are now broadcasting in AAC so it is possible. And since AAC is often paired with MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video there is already some widespread support for it.

Only thing is, I think streaming support is still in early stages. But I'm not entirely sure. I think even streaming flash videos are now using AAC/MPEG-4 AVC (h.264) quite a lot. So it's increasing.

But I dont think 24 bit support is really going to be there on the recieving end no matter what unless you offer direct file downloads in addition to streaming. FLAC would allow this though, and that is nice since it has metadata support and a lot of portable media players can now play FLACs too. But then again, computers can play 24-bit FLACs, but many portable media players still only play 16-bit FLACs. I dont think any portable media players do 24-bit anything, yet.

[johnwayne]

Your problem won't be the player, but server speed and end user speed. I would try amazon s3 and an html5 player, or maybe use bandcamp, or snack tools.

You need it compatible with all devices as well which can be tricky. There's also soundcloud.

[rtownsend]

I'm not a web developer, but these bookmarks I made awhile back seem very relevant:

Website solutions for playing mp3s with Apple devices?

MediaElement.js - HTML5 video player and audio player with Flash and Silverlight shims

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by 7+1

Hi guys.. i am currently upgrading my website and am about to put up my reel on my site..

I am a bit uneducated with total specs.. I am looking for the best "Sounding" (quality) audio player.

One that can at least stream 16/44.1.. and preferably @ 24 BIT.

Thoughts? and thank you in advance.

44.1/24 bit uncompressed audio has a bandwidth of ~2117 kbps (~2.1 Mbps). With a rockin' server and a very good downstream, that might work much of the time with optimal 'net circumstances depending on server traffic. But it's probably not a practical solution.

That means using a perceptual encoding algorithm like mp3, AAC, WMA, or Vorbis. With greatly reduced bandwidth comes potential loss of perceived quality, but, happily, the upper levels of those formats are indistinguishable from the 'real thing' by most people, even among trained listeners.

The latter three formats are generally accepted as offering marginally higher quality at a given bitrate -- but the problem is that near-universal support only exists for mp3. AAC probably comes closest, but many Windows users would have to install the AAC codec in order to not have the browser throw a WTF? error.

So far, then, the most practical advice is to use a high resolution mp3.

Now we come to the player.

We are, interestingly (as in the ancient Chinese curse form of interesting), in an era of transition.

For most of the www's history, streaming media has been accomplished via browser plugins like Macromedia's (now Adobe's) Flash, MS's Silverlight (which is the system under Netflix Streaming) -- or, far less successfully and gracefully, the Quicktime plugin. Such plugins provided both a software mechanism for receiving the streamed media but, in the case of Flash, allowed developers to create sophisticated user interfaces with a number of advanced features. Unfortunately, those third party developed plugins did not always run with great efficiency (many Flash developers came from the visual design world and did not necessarily have an understanding of programming efficiency). And, of course, you don't get all that potential sophistication for nothing... the sophisticated Flash system inevitably had some overhead built in.

But with the advent of increased demand for mobile web appliances wiht long battery life, as well as increased strategic rivalries between Apple and Adobe, Apple elected to 'banish' Flash from the iOS operating system that runs their Touch, iPhone, and iPad, saying that developers should use native HTML5 support for streaming audio and video.

Great.

Except for one thing. HTML5 was not then and is not now a standard. It will not be a finalized standard for the better part of a decade, as plans now exist.

Support for HTML5's vague 'standards' is spotty and inconsistently implemented across browsers. Web developers are now faced with a situation that -- sadly -- parallels the troubled times of the late 90s when every browser implemented the (often vaguely stated) CSS standard in frequently fundamentally inconsistent ways.

The number of people who do have browsers that properly support HTML5 is around half to 2/3 (depending on whose statistics you buy). That leaves, what, around a billion people who don't?

And that means that a prudent web developer will likely need to make sure his streaming audio and video media has both Flash and HTML5 support. Some systems use HTML5 if it's available, but 'fall back' to Flash if it's not. Others, weighing the sophistication and maturity of Flash players, go the other way around, using a full featured Flash player where that's supported, but falling 'forward' to the much cruder, limited HTML5 native players in HTML5-ready browsers.

Here's a report on the state of HTML5 video from Long Tail Video, the people who make the popular (but no longer strictly free) JW Player.

The State Of HTML5 Video