Is this book a joke?
After purchasing several O'Reilly books in the past I was very disappointed with this book! For something published in January 2001 I was surprised to see so much out dated material and incorrect information in the book.
For starters, this book looks like it was a rush job written by a bunch of Mac users that still think people only use the Mac to create audio/music. For example, on pages 4 and 5 the headings don't match up with the paragraphs, and for something as basic as the <bgsound> and <embed> tags you'd think they could of done a better job documenting them. In general the book feels very unorganized, it seems that a page or two doesn't go buy without it saying for more info on xyz see chapter x.
Pictures of audio?
One thing that really makes me laugh and is waste of ink, is the pictures of audio. I really wish I knew what they were thinking. How can a picture of audio be helpful? Especially figures 1-2 A one-second button sound effect, 1-3 A four-second intro sound effect.. and my favorite 1-4 Optimium loop length of 13 seconds.
The tutorial on page 20 points to http://www.designingwebaudio.com/samples/foo.wav but the file isn't there. Also the tutorial doesn't even start off by telling you what software is being used. Based on the text from one of the pictures it might be Pro Tools, who knows.
huh?
On page 16 it mentions "Sound Forge Acid looping tool" sounds like their Mac guys that don't know what they're talking about. There are 2 different products by Sonic Foundry one is called Sound Forge and one is called ACID
On page 17, I never heard of a 90 minute CD, in fact the red book standard is about 76 minutes.
On page 98 they slam Netshow saying NT isn't stable and it's not suitable for live broadcasts but page 345 they say it's excellent for large-scale streaming.
On page 345 the chart makes it look like someone must have NT expertise to author for Windows Media, not true, can use many of the Cakewalk or Sonic Foundry products to author Windows Media and not need to now anything about NT.
On page 326-328, most of the products listed are several years old and newer versions are available. In some cases the products have been discontinued or the companies are basically out of business (Opcode). Many popular companies/products were omitted M-Audio (Midiman), Cakewalk (has pro and budget options), Cool Edit Pro, etc, etc..
Hopefully Barnes & Noble will let me return this piece of $#(^
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