Help for listening to sound files

All of the sounds in the Foreign Languages for Travellers pages are in .au format. If you are on a SUN or SGI Computer then you should not have problems playing them, if you are on a PC and some Mac's then you will probablly need a special program to play the sounds. Recent versions of Netscape and MS Internet Exporer have sound players built in that can play .au files automatically.

Help I can't download stuff!!!!
If you are having problems downloading or getting things to play please read one of the sound newsgroups, there are people on there who can help you out.
See below for the sound news groups.

What are the different file extensions
There is .au and .snd which is mostly for Sun and NeXT.
There is .voc and .wav which is mostly for IBM's.
There is .aiff which is mostly for Apple and SGI.
There is .iff which is mostly for Amiga.

Can I get more information about the formats?
Yes, there is an Audio Formats FAQ, and CWI's Audio File Formats Guide

Are there audio players and converts?
Yes, Cool Edit, WHAM, Wplany, Sox and others.

Where can I get the players and coverters from?

Windows Applications

Lots of sound players and music utilities.
This archive contains players and utilities for Windows 3.x

Lots of sound players and music utilities.
This archive contains players and utilities for Window's 95

Cool Edit
Plays and converts almost any file format, Lots of editing and effects.
Wham 1.33
A simple player/converter/editor. Supports AIFF, AU, IFF, VOC, WAV and raw 8-bit SND

Wplny 1.2a
Play Anything, voc/wav/au/snd player for windows

To play sounds without a sound card, see
How to get sound from the PC speaker (in Win 3.x)
How to use the PC Speaker (in Win95)

DOS Applications

Lots of sound players and utilities.
This archive contains players and utilities for MSDOS

SOX"Sound Exchange"
Converts almost anything to almost anything else.

Macintosh Applications

Lots of sound players and utilities for the Mac
This archive contains players and utilities for the Mac

SoundApp 1.51 (141Kb)
Plays and converts between many different formats, including AIFF, SND, Sun AU, WAV, VOC, IFF, Quicktime and Audio CD.

Mac Sound Tools
Yoiu will find lots of sounds / sound tools here, including Briansoundtool.

SoundEffects 0.91
A versitile sound editor/player/recorder for the Mac

Amiga Applications

Sound player: Play16_1_5 and others
A versitile sound player for the Amiga

Unix Applications

XPLAY
A sound player for Sun Sparc Machines, plays .aiff, .au and .wav

You can also try these ftp sites:
Host : nigel.msen.com
Host : oak.oakland.edu
Host : wuarchive.wustl.edu
Host : ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu

Are there News Groups I can read for sounds and such?
alt.binaries.sounds.utilities
alt.binaries.sounds.cartoons
alt.binaries.sounds.d
alt.binaries.sounds.misc
alt.binaries.sounds.tv
alt.binaries.sounds.movies