Attack of the Chipmunks
This has been a frustrating week for me, but I know I’m not the only one. This week I have encountered an old nemesis much more frequently than usual: The DREAD CHIPMUNK EFFECT.
And bless the multiple poor podcasters I spoke with this week who have only recently learned that their past two dozen episodes have been unintelligible to a vast sea of potential listeners, all because they had never encountered their own podcast in an online flash player (or hardware device based on Flash, such as iriver’s U10). Millions of listeners everyday. Tuning out because of a stupid thing that really would not be hard to fix at the highest levels…
Most likely, this post will be added to the growing record of unanswered pleas for support to Abode (owners of Flash) to add support for more bitrates/sampling rates. Rather than describe the problem (if you’ve encountered it before, you KNOW all too well what I’m talking about) or reinvent the wheel in terms of describing the solutions, I thought I would just point to a lot of great blog posts that have addressed this issue over the years (over 97,000 results returned when searching for “mp3 flash chipmunk”):
http://www.summitsolutions.co.uk/blog/how-to-correct-the-chipmunk-effect-in-the-podpress-flash-player
http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/chipmunk.html
http://music.podshow.com/music/faq.htm
http://crowdabout.us/faq/#chipmunks
http://innertoob.com/faq.htm#chipmunks
Adobe needs to address this. Their flash technology has spawned literally hundreds of widgets for blogs and podcasts, yet they aren’t supporting mp3 as well as needed. If they hope to remain the multimedia player of choice (with browser penetration the likes of which perhaps no other add-on has ever seen) then they should respond to millions of Chipmunked listeners, and get it fixed.
Next up: Audacity. One of the most popular free recording products out there, and the defaults for encoding mp3s often mean incompatibility with Flash players. Audacity, fix this or be pushed aside by a smarter product that means to make sure that recordings made by its software are as universally compatible as is possible with mp3s.
Lastly, if you are a podcaster who doesn’t think much about non-ipod, non-itunes listeners, it’s time to do so now. You are alienating vast numbers of potential listeners when you choose to ignore their hardware or software preferences. (Reports still show 80% of podcast listeners don’t listen on a portable device- they listen on their computer with speakers, but I am amazed at how many podcasters don’t even know that! Put a poll on your blog and ask them: you’ll see 60-80% pretty consistently.) Compatability is not dififcult. Listen to your podcast online in a Flash player. If you hear chipmunks, sort it out (the links above will all help). Well, cry first, then sort it out.
I’m seriously thinking of putting together an action group of web developers, podcast technologists and multimedia gurus to go pound on Adobe’s front door until they do something. They are standing in the way of some really cool development (and also enabling some really cool development, admittedly).
If you want to tell Adobe to support more mp3 bit rates, sample rates and additional file types, here’s the Wish List address.
And tell them “Hi” from me.
I’m tired now.