Hi Everyone,

We would greatly appreciate some feedback on acceptable sound quality versus download time for audio files as I'll describe in a minute. Artic has been experimenting with various digital audio compression methods so we can provide a library of our audio tapes and tutorials at our website for anyone to freely download and playback on their computer.

Our first experiments are now available to download at www.artictech.com. From the home page click on AUDIO TAPES. There are several 2 minute sound clips from an info tape recorded with different compression rates for people to test. These are GSM encoded .WAV files that can be played back on the built-in Windows 95 media player. A link is provided for downloading a GSM player for Windows 3.1 Please understand that these tape is highly compressed so the sound is like AM radio. There is also a 1 hour INFO tape that takes about 40 minutes to download at 28 Kbps The tape describes various Artic design philosophies and several products like notetakers and our new WV97 enhancements for internet access and MS Office97..

Here are the tradeoffs to consider. Since host server space can quickly become a problem and file download times undesirable, we must use data compression. By doing this we will also reduce the audio fidelity in varying degrees depending on the data rate. We have initially used an aggressive method which results in AM radio quality sound. This method is totally intelligible, but somewhat muffled. We are concerned that some critics may not find this acceptable (of course there are no critics on the internet, ha ha). Our objectives for an audio tape library are listed below. We would appreciate your thoughts sent to ideas@artictech.com.

OBJECTIVE 1: Download time for an audio file at 28 Kbps is less than it will take to play back. (This will allow real time streaming to be used in the future).

OBJECTIVE 2: The playback engine must be widely useable, free and easy to obtain (hopefully downloada

OBJECTIVE 3: Sound quality must be intelligible and comfortable to listen to.

Thanks all for any participation.

Tim Gargagliano, Artic Technologies

P.S. Just a few other tidbits while I'm here

Artic has recently made several announcements that are described in more detail on our website.

1.) First is our 12 Year Access Anniversary - Some Special Offers to say thank you to all of the people who have helped us make improve Artic products over the years.

Special Offer A.) A Limited Edition of Mini TransPort 500 for $595.

Special Offer B).The Complete Access Suite for $995 contains an ISA hardware speech synthesizer and 6 top notch access programs that provide SYNCHRONIZED SPEECH & MAGNIFICATION for Windows 95, Windows 3.1 and DOS

2.) A 30 day Full Trial of WinVision 97 with manuals and tapes is now available for $19.95 (can be applied to purchase). The 30 minute demo download of course is free.

3.) Duo MAGnifico is a Synchronized Speech & Magnification package for Windows 95 ($795).

4.) WinVision 97 is only a couple of months old, and a NEW major new update ver 4.1 will soon be available for free download on our WEB site (to WV97 owners). IE3 can now be completely navigated as if it was a word processor right down to the character), new clipboard and search functions. Other improvements include new color triggers, 3720 improvements, new synthesizers, SAPI support and more.

5.) Our new high accuracy AdVest text-to-speech translator has been available for months now.

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