I’m grateful to VRMAG for hosting my ‘vibrating’ considerations once more. Though this time these will not be too VR-specific but more web and site oriented.

I’ve been asking myself for years now about how sound was used over the Internet. In this article I’ll try to find out some rules, maybe, which could be interesting to contemplate.

I’d like to begin with two examples: the last VRMAG issue and the Richard Strauss official site.

The first acoustic impression we have when visiting those sites is silence. Hmm, silence, we know for sure there is audio content somewhere but we have to look for it. Where is the lesson then? The absence of sound demonstrates the fragile, delicate task that web pages sound embedding represents.

I recently held a fruitful seminar at an Art College in Lugano. I talked about audio in the audiovisual industry and was impressed by the students necessity to know the main parameters of sound when using it in practice. This was a demonstration for me that sound is both an art and a science. I gave the following points, which I have adapted here to ‘new media’ as the same factors intervene: psychological, cultural and physical.

Sound is invasive. It carries an energetic flux of information. We can’t avoid sound perception when not stopping the source or closing our ears… and even, we still hear something. Sound is always with us. So when we propose a sound to our audience we must consider that the listener may not be willing to hear it. We must therefore allow the choice to stop the playback.

Sound is volatile and indistinguishable from the time flowing sensation. Sound events begin, evolve and end. Technology helped us bring the way of recording the semantic content of an audio message. This ‘photography’ is a physical object that can be manipulated or repeated, altering the original properties of the sound source. I think the Internet owns a particular facility: it seems to freeze time or adapts the absolute time to the personal biological time so that every user can ride through the pages at his own rhythm. We must therefore be conscious that sound influences Internet fruition, particularly introducing an ‘absolute’ time perception.

Sound is emotion and therefore linked with psyche and soma. It becomes personal. Its perception is an attentive skill and requires an intense use of memory. We can precisely decide whether hearing or listening to, focusing on a sound source and employing different brain zones. That’s an action. The Internet is the convergence of individuals, persons. Its soundtrack should ideally consider the infinite variety of personalities. So to draw people together, or ‘simply’ communicate we have existing and accepted cultural expressions (music and language for example). These heritages are useful but not universal. They pass the individual emotional filter and are interpreted singularly.

Web designers often don’t program sounds at all. Maybe this is the easiest way to evade the ‘problem’. I think on the contrary that this decision is based on the static peculiarity of the medium.

Sound has been discovered to be excellent for showing things in association with images. Where the visual form isn’t sufficient, sound points exactly where the message must be understood. This is typical in the audiovisual industry where sound is synchronous with the events.

Here I’d like to say a word to the QTVR community. As this medium is a virtual representation of the reality, the easiest and proper use of sound would be a virtual representation of reality, too. VRs make a particular use of time, space and emotion, so if we take a microphone with us when shooting, we make no mistake and even we contribute to represent our time, space and emotion in that precise moment.

As long as Internet will be a text-based environment, sound will be, let’s say, redundant. It becomes useful when an interaction with the user is required.

If we decide to program sounds we must answer to some questions:

What for?
Enhance interactivity? (Mouseovers, buttons)
Add an alternative to text? (Speech)
Play or Joke? (Sound effects)
Accompany? (Music)

How?
As a brand? (Jingles, voice characters)
As an interface? (Navigation tools)
As reality? (Environmental sounds, radios)

Where?
Into the frame?
Into the content?

Answers depend on the site we have to care of. The more we want to identify it (personalize it), the more reasonably we’ll use sound. Before putting a single noise we’ll have to investigate on the personality and the message (the mission) of the client.

MP3’s euphoria and ring tone’s success are the demonstration that users like to play (or should I say deal) with music and sounds. We tend to wear the sound and sonic identification is crucial to appear different, unique, and individual. Studies and improvements will allow us to handle sound bytes in a simpler and more client oriented manner. Take MPEG-4 for example, which is partially implemented in QuickTime. Through its structured audio (SAOL-SA) modules, for example, we’ll be able to send ‘packages’ of sound together with their definitions and controls (the so called ‘scenes’). The light size (same as MIDI) of these messages will be very attractive for broadcasting over Internet and wireless systems. Coming in the near future…

I thank you for having read all this bla bla. I just wanted to induce reflection. Maybe next time you’ll have to build a site, you’ll have a problem more to think about…

- A pleasant audio theory course
- Also interesting – sound theory
- More on MPEG 4
- A weird radio
- Classic real world Ads (not flash, PC only)
- Beginners article on web-Ad sound design by Tessa Wegert
Email: rich@invisiblerecordings.com