CANADIAN MUSICIAN ONLINE - November/December 1998

Cable Access Rules - November 1998

Our production coordinator, Randy Rowe, had just subscribed to the Wave at home, and his daily ravings about the speed of web page loads and huge file downloads pushed me over the edge. I had to have it.

I called Cogeco Cable in Niagara Falls and after a long time on hold arranged an appointment to have 'The Wave' installed on my home computer. On the appointed day, the computer guy arrived first and installed a network card and necessary drivers. He then configured my browser for web access, e-mail and news.

Next the cable guy arrived. Since the cable line and our home office are on opposite sides of the house, it took a while to figure out the best way to run the cable to the computer. The main cable line into the house was split between the computer and the televisions and a cable 'modem' was attached to the network card and the incoming cable and plugged into an AC outlet. After a short warm-up period, I fired up Netscape Navigator and yikes - Randy was right. I tested some favourite websites against a 2X modem running at 31,200 and load times were between 3 to 5 times as fast. A 1 Meg file downloaded in seconds instead of minutes. Web searches are lightning fast, e-mail is sent faster, especially with attachments and newsgroup postings are downloaded instantly. Streaming audio such as Realaudio and Liquidaudio have much superior quality when listening at cable speed.

Aside from speed, there are other advantages to cable access - it doesn't tie up your phone line and you don't need a second line; there is no dialing up, disconnecting or busy signals; there are no time-outs or disconnects; you can send and receive faxes with your fax modem while you are online. The cost from Cogeco is a $99.95 installation fee and $39.95 per month for unlimited access, all charged to your cable bill.

One caution - since you are effectively on a network, others can have access to any shared drives or devices on your computer which are not password protected. A friend of Randy's learned this lesson the hard way when some fellow cable subscriber deleted essential Windows files on his computer and left a message telling him to be more careful.

Cable access is available in a growing number of centres across Canada. The check availability and get more information visit www.wave.ca or call your local cable company. Let me know how you like it at

Resources

If you use sound effects, you can shop and buy them online at Sound Dogs (http://www.sounddogs.com). You can search through over 60,000 sounds by keyword or category. Once you have selected the sounds you want, you can select different formats, sample rates, bit sizes, and in mono and stereo. Charge it to your credit card and the location of where the files can be downloaded is e-mailed to you. Great idea and a great looking site. Bonus - the principal owners of this Los Angeles-based site are Canadians.
Plans are underway for Canadian Music Week '99 to be held in Toronto March 3-7. Complete details including the Conference, the Festival and the Exhibition are available at www.cmw.net.
The Liquid Audio Indie 1000 program allows indie artists to make their music available for sales over the Internet in Liquid Audio format. Buyers worldwide can download songs and record them on to a CD for later listening. For more information, visit www.liquidaudio.com.
Yamaha Canada has premiered their website at yamaha.ca. Here you will find company background, product information, education programs and links to Yamaha worldwide.
If you find Notepad and Wordpad frustrating and need a great text editor, try Programmers' File Editor at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/people/cpaap/pfe. It has extensive features, excellent help files and is especially suited for programmers and web designers.
The Long & McQuade website has recently been redesigned and it is now one of the best music retail sites on the Web. To get to local store click on the Canadian map and that will take you to a page with store information, a picture and a map of its location. There is also information on each department, company news, tips and tricks and hot gear. Visit this great site at www.long-mcquade.com.
The Canadian Musician website (www. canadianmusician.com) features a directory of websites of Canadian artists. If you like to have your site added, send your band's name and URL to .
Norris-Whitney Communications operates The Music & Audio Connection, the international online resource for music enthusiasts, musicians, music and audio professionals. Included are classified ads, products for sale, company showcases, discussion forums, associations, music education, music and audio resources, career information and file libraries. Updates to the site are available by e-mail or on The Pointcast Network Visit at musicandaudio.com . For more information, e-mail to , FAX (905) 641-1648 or call (905) 641-3471.