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Technical FAQs

Q: How do I play the demos?
A: Just use our own player. Use the familiar play, stop, forward and rewind controls to listen to any of our buyout music tracks. The demos are audio-watermarked but this will not be present in the full quality download you receive.
You will also need a media player or an application suitable for playing WAVs and MP3s such as Windows Media Player or Quicktime for the music you buy from our royalty free music library,or to listen to demos downladed from the offline catalogue. Most production editing software packages allow MP3s and WAVs to be edited and inserted wherever you want and almost every computer has the ability to play them.

Q: What file formats are the tracks I receive?
A: Full tracks and any variations, (such as 30 second cuts and Underscores for example), allow you to download both a CD quality WAV, (16 bit stereo, 44.1 kHz), or a very high quality MP3 file (256bit in stereo). Loops are only provided in WAV format (16 bit stereo, 44.1KHz).

Q: What other formats are available?
A: The website contains WAV and MP3 files as they are by far the most popular way to distribute audio files over the Internet. We can provide files in virtually every other format available. Contact us to discuss your requirements.
Please note: all loops are only provided as WAV files.

Q: Which format is best?
A: Because WAV files are uncompressed, they have better sound quality than MP3s. We offer both formats for your convenience so you can choose which format best suits your needs.

Q: What is MP3?
A: MP3 is a compression format for audio use that reduces the size of the file. Uncompressed music files are very big (typically 1 minute of music equals 10 MB of data) so MP3s became popluar at a time when average internet speeds were much slower and storage space was an issue. Check out the Wikipedia site for more information on the MP3 format.

Q: What is the quality of the MP3 files?
A: All the main tracks are extremely high quality, 256 bit files in stereo.
All the demos are lower quality 56 bit files in stereo to give you a sample of the music, for preview and evaluation purposes.

Q: Why 256 bit?
A: We want your productions to benefit from premium quality soundtracks that reflect the time and effort we have put into the recording processes we use to get the best sound quality possible. The superior clarity of 256 bit over the industry standard 128 bit is clearly audible.

Q: So what difference does 256 bit actually make?
A: It provides a warmer, much more accurate reproduction of a WAV file because it hasn't been compressed as much. The 256 bit files are also about one fifth the size of an uncompressed WAV.

Q: Why are your loops supplied as uncompressed WAV files?
A: Loops are usually used for multimedia presentations and interactive media like websites and flash videos where smaller filesizes are very important. Supplying them as uncompressed WAV files gives you the flexibility to convert and compress them into whichever format and filesize you desire whilst always retaining the best quality original.

Q: So how long does it take to receive the data?
A: The demos are lower quality for preview and evaluation purposes and should be audible immediately. As a rough guide, a 3 minuted uncompressed WAV is about 30MB in size and the same track as a 256bit MP3 will be around 5.5MB in size.
How fast you stream or download the tracks ultimately depends on the speed of your internet connection, but you will certainly receive your order a great deal quicker than waiting for the mail! See our Purchasing FAQs for more information on music delivery.




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