Questions and Answers

If You Encounter Problems…
Some of the common problems that result in questions asked of me are discussed here:

Netscape and SoundApp:
Q: I’ve configured Netscape to use SoundApp as the sound helper application. However, whenever Netscape launches SoundApp, it reports an end-of-file error and won’t play the files. Why isn't it working?
A: The “file type” pop-up in Netscape’s helper configuration pane is not set properly. “PLAY”, which Netscape seems to default to, is a Play List. This setting will confuse SoundApp, since the file downloaded is not a Play List.

To setup Netscape to play Windows “.wav” files via SoundApp, to the following:
  1. Open the “General Preferences” dialog and select the “Helpers” pane.
  2. Edit the the following entry or create it if it doesn’t already exist:
      a. MIME Type: “audio/x-wav” and Suffixes: “wav”.
      b. Then under “Handled By” click the “Appliction:” radio button.
      c. Click the “Browse…” button, find and select SoundApp.
      d. Using the “File type:” pop-up menu, select “WAVE” for the File Type.
  3. Repeat for the “audio/wav” MIME Type.
For other file formats, either edit an existing audio MIME type or create a new one for the desired type. Typically you’ll receive an alert from Netscape telling you that it can’t find an apropriate plug-in for a type. See the “Formats” section for likely suffixes, for example “au” for Sun Audio files.

MPEG:
Q: Why can’t I play MPEG files?
A: SoundApp can only play MPEG files on PowerPC-based computers.

Q: Why does SoundApp refuse to play some MPEG audio files but not most others?
A: The MPEG audio files that will not play are most likely encoded using MPEG-2 instead of MPEG-1. MPEG-2 files can include multi-channel information and use a different encoding format for the MPEG bitstream. SoundApp cannot currently play MPEG-2 Layer I or II files, but it can play MPEG-2 Layer III files and Shockwave “.swa” files.

Sound Playback:
Q: Why do some files (especially MPEG Layer III) start to play then stop? 
A: Your computer’s processor or disk drive is too slow.

Q: Why doesn’t clicking in the progress bar work for some files? 
A: Not all file formats inherently support random access and SoundApp doesn’t yet emulate this capability for those formats. File encodings that do not support random access are: MOD/S3M/MTM files using the ZSS driver, Amiga IFF Fibbonacci-delta compressed files, DVI ADPCM and any of the G72x compression formats.

AppleScript Ranges:
Q: Why does the start at and stop at AppleScript parameters work for some files and not others?
A: SoundApp doesn’t support these parameters for stereo SoundEdit, non-block based compressed files (Fibbonacci-delta, G.72x, Huffman and DVI ADPCM), MOD/S3M/MTM and MIDI. Future versions may support some of the compressed types for conversion.