If you are using a Power Mac at school or a Macintosh at home, chances are that the sound system is already set up.Most Macintoshes come with soundcards and speakers already but if you have a PC and and do not have both a soundcard and speakers you cannot get sound no matter what you do.
So if you have a soundcard and speakers you also need to have a helper application such as SoundMachine or SoundApp installed that will allow you to listen to the sound files in Netscape. Later versions of Netscape (3.0 and above) have built in (internal) sound players which you can use - or you can elect to use a different, external sound player such as SoundApp 2.0.Basically, if you are on a school lab computer and the sound files are not working, the problem is most likely that SoundApp or Sound Machine has not been installed and activated. Believe it or not, this process is easy to do.
You can print these instructions by clicking on the Print button or by going under the file menu and selecting print.
TO DOWNLOAD and ACTIVATE SOUNDAPP and/or SOUND MACHINE
- The process is identical for SoundApp and Sound Machine. For demonstration purposes, we will only discuss SoundApp.
- Mac Users: First, download SoundApp and/or Sound Machine and save it to the desktop on Macs.
PC users can use Sound Recorder. It is probably in your C:/windows directory.
- Once it is downloaded, Mac users should drag the icon that says "SoundApp" that is on the desktop over to the hard drive icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. It should be named "Siamese" or "Basset" or some such animal breed name if you are in the school computer lab. This action will put the program "SoundApp" onto the computer's hard drive in the root directory.
PC Users - skip this step.
- Next, go back into Netscape.
- Now you need to go under the menu Options/General Preferences/helpers if you are using Netscape 2.0 or above and under Options/Preferences/Helper Applications if you are using below Netscape 2.0 . Note: If you are using a less than current version of Netscape, you really should upgrade your version of Netscape. It's free for students and teachers and easy to do.
- Once you are in this helper application menu, scroll down until you see the file type .wav (pronounced wave).
- The .wav extension may be associated with SoundApp on Macs (or with any sound application in PCs) However, it has not yet been activated or your sound files would have worked.
- To activate the program, you need to click on the .wav file type and then click on the Browse button (or click on Edit and then the Browse button if you are in Netscape 3.0).
- Now you need to navigate to the location of the program "SoundApp" (or Sound Recorder in PCs). Once you find the application on the hard drive, double click on it to select it. This action serves to tell Netscape where the sound application is located on the hard drive.
- Now click the apply button to activate the program.
- Click Ok.
- Now go under the menu options and select Save Options is this is an option in your version..
- Voila! Your Mac or PC will now automatically open up an external sound player when you download a wave sound file! Wasn't that easy?
The .aiff extension in Macs should be associated with something as well. Many sound programs will work, but Sound Machine is a good one. Download Sound Machine and repeat the above steps using .aiff instead of .wav and using "Sound Machine" instead of "SoundApp".
This part is somewhat technical, so if you don't really care, you can just hit Netscape's back button to return to your previous location in the program. You can select this link to return to the glossary. SETTING THE VOLUME LEVEL
The volume control might not be set properly. You can adjust the sound level in SoundApp by playing the file (double click on the file you want to hear) and press open apple (the command key) and the plus sign at the same time to increase the volume. Similarly, to decrease volume, press open apple and the minus sign at the same time while the sound file is playing.
To permanently change the volume level:If you are having problems, have someone assist you. Problems such as these are too complex to deal with here in this help section.
- You need to launch the program SoundApp.
- Go under the menu Options and into Preferences.
- Select the icon on the left that says "Playback". A new menu will appear on the right.
- Change the volume level to whatever you want. Three is the best level for the school computers.
- Do not change any other settings.
- Click Ok.
- Go under the menu File and select Quit to close "SoundApp".