Midi Files - Toshiba Portégé 650CT User Manual

Playing Back Sound, Video and Animation Files
Playing Back Sound, Video and Animation Files
Multimedia files are stored in a variety of formats depending on
the type of file.
Sound Files
Traditionally, sound is recorded in an analog form. For example, a
magnetic tape recorder uses electrical signals to create a single
model of a given sound or waveform.
Most multimedia computers support two types of sound files,
wave files and MIDI files.
Digital Audio Wave Files
Digital audio uses computer-based technology to record, handle
and recreate sound. Digital audio systems sample the waveform at
fixed time intervals, for example, at 30 times per second, and
reduce the sound to a sequence of numbers.
When you play back a digital waveform or wave file, the software
transforms the numeric data back into its original acoustic
waveform.
If you use the microphone to record sounds, the computer stores
them as wave files.
Wave files have the extension .WAV.

MIDI Files

Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is a standard lan-
guage used by composers to create music to be played by a syn-
thesizer. MIDI songs consist of commands, not actual digital
sounds. For this reason, the size of a MIDI file is much smaller
than a .WAV file.
You can connect an external MIDI device, such as a keyboard
with a built-in synthesizer, or you can play MIDI files using the
computer's internal synthesizer.
Part I: Getting To Know Your Computer
The Wide World of Multimedia
145