SSEYO Koan Plugin Create Great-Sounding Background Musice for the Web Forrest Stroud
SSEYO's Koan Pro gives you the ability to create great-sounding background music for your web pages. Koan sound bytes can play for up to eight hours, yet they average only 7 KB per piece. This presents webmasters with the perfect solution for giving users something cool to listen to while browsing or downloading files from your web site.
Not only do Koan clips take up less space than comparable MIDI and WAV files, they also sound much better. You can create everything from soothing and mystical ambient tunes to thumping techno beats with Koan Pro, and the sound mixer doesn't even require a musical keyboard.
Koan Plug-in
As long as your audience has the Koan Plug-in (also known as the Interactive Koan Music Control or IKMC), they too can easily listen to the relaxing and reflective or quick and provocative music clips that you create. The IKMC plug-in combines the Koan LiveConnect Plugin, Koan ActiveX Control, and Koan Music Engine to offer the most extensive support for generative music currently available (including MP3 support and support for the new Koanimations — interactive music with the ability to animate animations and user actions on the Web).
The plug-in plays Koan clips that are generated locally in real time and can even make use of SoundFonts. Check out SSEYO's LiveConnect site for a multimedia showcase of the extensive capabilities found in both Koan Pro and the Koan Plug-in. While the web browser plug-in give users an efficient way to playing Koan clips, the Pro sound mastering tool is what makes Koan really shine.
Koan Pro's Sound Mastering Tool
By utilizing sound templates in Koan Pro, you can take pre-existing pieces and customize them to your delight with more than 200 specially designed variable controls. Fifty separate voices, five different voicetypes (ambient, rhythmic, fixed, follow, and repeat), four music rule types (scale, harmony, next note, and rhythm), Microsoft DirectX 5 support, an all new pattern editor, "WAV Map" technology (makes it possible for one WAV file to generate an entire generative instrument), and specialized support for most popular soundcards represent only the beginning of Koan Pro's extensive selection of on-screen custom controls.
The Final Word
There are alternatives to Koan Pro that already exist on the web, including Microsoft Internet Explorer's built-in support for MIDI background sound clips. Additionally, apps like RealAudio and TrueSpeech can stream remote sound clips in real-time, giving your users the opportunity to listen to music while it's being downloaded, rather than having to wait until the entire piece has been downloaded before being played.
Still, few apps can match the high-quality music and small files produced by Koan Pro, and fewer still offer powerful tools for both creating and playing music on the web. If you've been looking for a unique way to spice up your web site, CD ROM, or similar multimedia project, Koan Pro could well be the beat that you've been missing.
Pros: Great-sounding background sound for web sites, sound bytes average only 7 KB
Cons: Koan Music clips lack real-time streaming and built-in web browser support, questionable need/value for the plug-in (Koan clips no longer used or encountered on many web sites)
