I should start off by saying that 28.8 MP3's are not an official standard. They are proprietary formats developed by Fraunhofer. The slowest bitrate supported in the official MPEG Audio Layer 3 is 32 kbps. Anything slower (like 11025 kHz stereo at 24 kbps) is not official MP3.

Some Microsoft products (like Netmeeting) support this format. Others, including Windows Media Player (WMP), do not. WinAmp does support this format.

Unfortunately, WMP sets itself up as your MP3 player. Winamp can easily restore your settings so that it is your default MP3 player. . . except in Internet Explorer (IE). IE uses different way of determining your default MP3 player. I'm not sure what this is. All I know is that WMP gets launched from IE even if WinAmp is set up as your default player.

There's no way to fix this in IE. What about in WMP? That depends. If you have 6.0.x, there is no way to fix it. If you have 6.1+, you can fix it. Under Options, you will be able to disable WMP for MP3s. Then your real default player will launch when you click on them.

But, you say, this only affects people with IE+WMP. But, unfortunately, WMP and IE are more common than Netscape and RealAudio. That means more than half my visitors can't use 28.8 MP3's without going under the hood, and that's no way to run a web site.

Questions, comments or suggestions about this web site? Email me at aaron.bentley@utoronto.ca