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How to Hear MDN's MP3 Audio

If you are using a dial-up connection, a modem speed of 28.8K or higher will work fine. Maybe 14.4K would work, but we haven't tested that. And forget anything below 14.4K speed.

Next, you need to have an MP3 player, if you do not already have one. There are a number of free programs available. The best known are:

• WinAmp: The worldwide standard for MP3 players. In fact, MDN uses WinAmp for encoding the MP3 sound. If you're on a Windows platform, you should not consider anything else but WinAmp.
• Sonique: Strange screen display, but good ratings.
• RealAudio: You need version 7, the latest version, to play MP3.

• PM123, a pretty slick GUI player. You might want to try out some revised DLLs that provide better support for eight-bit sound cards.
• MPG123. It's a text-mode player, but a bit more stable than PM123 for Internet streaming. It's a port of the standand UNIX MP3 player.

• MacAMP.
• SoundJam

When you've downloaded a player, run the installation program. With WinAmp, that will make WinAmp the default player for MP3 streaming audio when you call up MDN's live legislative coverage with Microsoft Internet Explorer.

With some versions of Netscape and with Warp, it will be a bit more complicated. You need to make sure that WINAMP.EXE (or whatever player you are using) is the default player for *.PLS files. See the MDN MP3 information section for details about *.PLS files. For the OS/2 Warp players, you will need to have Netscape call a batch file that passes the .PLS file to the player as a parameter.

Click here to return to the links for live audio from the legislature.