Soren Allen is a Digital Humanities student at Belmont University
SoundCite is a program which generates inline audio for webpages. SoundCite aims to seamlessly incorporate audio into web design, allowing readers to read and listen to audio, not needing to stop reading to listen. The text that the audio corresponds to is put into a gray box with a play button that you can click while reading. The audio plays over the text while you read, and the playback controls are inside the body of text, not somewhere off to the side of the screen.
The audio here can be used for a multitude of reasons, including emphasizing spoken words, background noise for an event of some kind, or music that is incorporated into the story. The website shows numerous examples of news articles and other webpages that have used SoundCite for extra effect with their audio. SoundCite uses a variety of audio files to allow for versatile use of the program. It is extremely simple to use:
- Publish an audio file to the web, and insert the URL into SoundCite (if you don’t have an audio file but want to try it out, the Gigue from J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor is available as a sample audio file).
- If you do not want your entire file to play, you may enter start and stop times for the audio file. You can sample the section of the file before you finalize it.
- Paste the embedded code that SoundCite gives you at the top of your page and wherever you want the audio in line with your text.
SoundCite can be used for a variety of projects, and it is extremely quick and easy to use with any webpage, and it also functions on mobile devices. SoundCite is available as a WordPress plug-in.