Sounds

From ManorManual

Just because you hear it, others may not :)

[edit] Adding Sounds

Local folder sounds

• If a wav file is placed in your My Documents folder or a sub folder of it, Manor will place it in your chat area note Sounds for playing. Example, if you have songfavorite.wav in the My Music folder it will be ready to play in any Manor.

Server Console sounds

Refer to the Server Console page.

• Open Control/Server Console then click Sounds. You will see a list box of active sounds. When you click one you can edit the name or replace the sound file.

• If you are adding a new sound, click New, you will see New Sound to rename and upload the wav. The upper box is name and the lower the filename.

• This sound will be available as the chat window music note.

Spot sounds

Refer to the Room Editing page.

• Sound: Is the file name you have chosen, yoursong.wav, to upload for your state. Unix files are case sensitive, no spaces, and no special characters. It is a good idea to know what file you want and where it is located before going to the next step. If you take too long to find your file the server will kick you off.

• Choose: Choose the wave sound file from your local folder. It is a good idea to know what file you want and where it is located before this step.

• Upload: This button will upload your wave sound file from your computer to the server. This will only need to be done once as long as you use the same file name the server will have it ready for duplicate state sounds. In this case just use choose for the exact filename.

Scripted sounds

Music Script

import manor
def startTune(dummy):
   manor.playSound("http://manor.hoster.com/beethoven.wav")
def mnr_enter(userID):
   if userID == manor.myID():
       manor.fetchSound("http://manor.hoster.com/beethoven.wav", startTune, 0)

The simple script will download the sound then play it after download.

Tips on Sounds

Preparing Sounds for Manor.

Keep in mind always that many of your guests may be on dialup or an older OS. This means the song should be 1 mb or under.

Some thought should be used as the the nature of the sound in your Manor. A "lock" sound effect should be in u-law or PCM so all users can hear the sound effect.

Overview

A Mac client will only hear PCM, u-law or a-law files.

Windows uses a filename extension of mp3 for the MPEG Layer-3 format, hence are called mp3 files. You must add a RIFF/WAV header to standard MPEG Layer-3 audio files. This enables them to be played by the Windows version of the client, which will only play sound files with a RIFF header. The RIFF header marks the file as WAVE data with the audio parameters as determined from header of the MP3 file. The format tag specifies that the data should be handled by the Fraunhofer MPEG Layer-3 Audio Codec, which must be installed on the computer running the client. You can Google for Audio Codec for MP3 for installation and information about this codec. A mp3 wav file is an ordinary mp3 but with a riff-wav header. The riff-wav header is needed by the client to pass the sound file on to the OS player. A program to convert wavs to mpeg layer 3 wavs will be needed.

There are many fine sound editors around, visit the mp3.com site to peruse the large collection of good mp3 software.

You may start with an original CD track but in 44.100 16 bits stereo PCM wav format that means it will be a 40mb file. To fix that, open the song in your sound editor and select an encoding tradeoff of quality vs size. A decent starting point is; Wave MEPG Layer-3 40 kBits/s, 24,000 Hz, stereo. That done you will save your sound as a mp3 wav. check the songname.wav before uploading.

---

Sound References to Google

Fraunhofer or Lame Decoder

Goldwave