With a little luck and a little technnolgy assistance from Emblaze, you will be able to hear streaming audio on this page. The recording and exploitation of the software is easy. The above pictured box is used for the recording. Simply drag an audio file into the box and recording begins. I paid about £50 for the licence fee.

Problems:

• exploits Java's audio component that is somewhat limited in bandwidth - satisfactory for speech but not always good for music;

• sometimes browsers don't even run the audio, therefore many visitors to websites report hearing nothing; and

• quality not as good as Real Audio.

Plus points:

• audio will start to stream within 15 seconds or so and will play for hours if necessary;

• very simple to use - it's also necessary to upload some small Java components to one's webpage; and

• no server required at romote end

Rating: 7/10

STREAM BOX RIPPER - for CONVERTING SOUND FILES FROM ONE TYPE TO ANOTHER http://www.streambox.com/

Problems:

• Real Audio files converted to other formats may sometimes be noisy and distorted.

Plus Points:

• Really simple to use, just drag up to 20 files at a time into the Streambox, and select file type to which you would like to convert;
• *.rm to *.mp3 or to *.wav
• CD to *.mp3 or *wav
• many other conversion types; and
• plays many file types

Rating 9/10