| Capability
| Rating
|
| Browser compatibility and percent of browsers with Plug-in
| Excellent.
|
| Interactive sound design capabilities
| Limited. Simply a file format for playback over PC (WAV) and Macintosh (AIFF).
Button rollovers.
|
| Software cost for encoding and streaming
| Free.
Can export WAV or AIFF files from any standard audio editing application including free Open Source audio editing applications.
|
| Level of documentation and support
| Limited/None.
|
| Audio encoding and content generation
| Easy.
Easy to export AIFF or WAV files from any standard audio editing application.
|
| Audio authoring and delivery
| Easy.
Easy to place WAV or AIFF files on a standard web server for downloading.
|
| Audio fidelity and compression
| Poor/None.
Large WAV and AIFF sound files sound good when uncompressed. Neither offer elegant compression for high fidelity with small file sizes over limited bandwidths.
|
| Low-bandwidth performance
| Poor.
WAV and AIFF work best as uncompressed 16-bit 44.1 kHz or 22.5 kHz sound files and are thus not suited for playback in low-bandwidth environments.
|
| Server performance and quality of software tools for large-scale streaming
| Poor/None.
WAV and AIFF are merely audio file types -- not proprietary formats such as RealMedia that include server-side technologies. |