Audio – Audio is a form of multimedia that allows viewers to hear information, rather than having to read it.
Audio can be used to enhance multimedia applications in a number of ways, for example in delivering lectures over the web, music used to add interest and emotion to a presentation, and other non-speech audio used as part of a general interface.
Advantages:
* It can convey meaning, providing an extra channel of information. It allows redundancy to be incorporated into the presentation of information, so that if the meaning is unclear to a user using visual information alone, the audio may clarify it. * Different learners use different learning strategies, and audio can provide additional information to support different learning styles, for example some users may learn more by hearing than reading a piece of text. * Audio can add a sense of realism. Cultural associations with music allow you to convey emotion, time period, geographic location, etc. However, when using audio in this way you must be aware that meanings may differ in different cultures. Methods of sound spatialisation are now available, giving the effect of 3D sound, and allowing environmental acoustic effects, such as reverberation, to be added. For example, for the Windows platform, Microsoft has defined the device-independent DirectSound interface for spatial sound as part of DirectX. * It is useful for directing attention to important events. Non-speech