Let us just start with knowing this; It always sounds better if you have WAV or AIFF files.
While doing the sound at equine events for dressage musical freestyles, we have come across many problems that occur frequently and the odd ones that have us stretching to the depths of our brain and google to find a solution to the problem. We intend to provide some basic advice to ensure your musical rarely fails (because you never can tell with technology). We have found the most reliable files are WAV files, we have not had anything go wrong so far with these. Our process involves copying the file to our laptop from a CD or USB, sometimes we have to convert the file to a WAV in our digital audio workstation, making sure the files are correctly named and put in their class playlist, then testing the whole track to make sure it does not fail during the dressage musical test.
CD’s: As a general rule of thumb, when making your CD, ensure it is a 44.1hz, 16 bit wav file size. This is the standard for audio CDs you buy from retail stores. We have found CD’s to be the most reliable.
USB’s: Again for us the preferred file size is 44.1hz, 16 bit wav. This will ensure a much better sound, especially when played through a quality sound system. We have had corrupt files from USB’s and sometimes with other files, even after checking them, will decide at some point to stop during the test, this is very distressing for the rider and us. This has only been the case for mp3 files, we haven’t come across this with wav files yet.
Sharing online: We have had people email us their musical, while this has worked well, sending bigger files like wav take time whereas mp3 is quick because it is a smaller size, though they appear to not be as trustworthy as WAV files. If it is at all possible, email a wav file to us well ahead of time, remember to correctly name it, check with us it plays all the way through (we will confirm this via email) and if there are any issues, we’ll have time to fix them.
If you are unsure what file size your musical is and want to know and/or would like to make a few changes to your musical, contact us and we’ll be glad to lend a hand.