Recommended sound format?

which is best?

[webboy1]

Hi,

I have done a lot of things on the web, but one thing i have never done is upload sounds to be downloaded by the user.

Basically the sound files will be highlights from a forum, which the user, if they wish, can download.

Can anyone recommend what file format i should use and why?

i.e. MPG? AVI? Quiktime? MP3? or a sound file within a flash movie?

Cheers
Webboy

[bcolflesh]

I guess it depends on your main audience and what kind of sound quality you need. Wav & MP3 are the typical choices because the most popular operating systems can usually play them right out of the box. Mac-centric sites sometimes lean towards Quicktime audio. Some sites use audio embedded in SWF files because they are under the mistaken impression that it cannot be extracted.

If this is going to primarily voice audio, you could use an MP3 encoder set to a very low bitrate (& mono) to achieve reasonable file sizes.

Looking into the future, I'm hoping this project catches on:

flac.sourceforge.net/

Regards,
Brent