Help with Five Spot Audio

If you're using WebTV, your terminal already has the necessary hardware and software built in for playing both the MP3 and the RealAudio clips. You can ignore the rest of this if you want and return to the page you were viewing.

To play the music clips on your computer, you'll need to have audio hardware — a sound card and speakers or earphones. Also, to play the RealAudio clips, you'll need to have a connection capable of a speed of at least 28.8 kbps.

To play either the MP3 or the RealAudio format, your browser must have the appropriate software capability either built-in or installed as a plug-in. Your browser may or may not already have the necessary capability. If you don't know if it does, you might begin by just trying to play one or both formats. Click on one of the MP3 links and see what happens. Then try one of the RealAudio links.

If your browser can't play one or the other of the formats, you can probably add the appropriate software capability. For information on getting the free RealOne player, go to the Real.com Web site. From that site, you can download the free RealOne player and get instructions for installing it. This player will play both MP3 and RealAudio. You don't need to get the $14.95 version unless you want to. That version has extra features, but it won't give you better sound quality than the free version. (You'll have to look carefully for the link to the Free RealOne Player; it's almost hidden, in plain sight.) After you've downloaded and installed RealOne, you can test it using some of the audio clips on the Real.com site. If these don't work for you, check the troubleshooting Support offered on the Real.com site. If that fails, try contacting RealAudio Technical Support. If you can play audio from the Real.com site, you're ready for the audio on the Five Spot site.

For playing just MP3 files, there are many, many players besides the RealOne player that you can use, some free, some not. There are lots of Web sites with information on these players. For a general MP3 resource that includes player information, see mp3.com.

Should you need to know the MIME type of our MP3 files when configuring your browser, it's audio/x-mpeg (not audio/mpeg).

If you have trouble specific to the Five Spot site or want to offer comments about our audio capabilities or this Help page, please send us a message through our Say Hi page.