Newbie: Explain sounds and music?

I just joined today. There was music playing on the welcome island, but I haven't heard it in the two or three places I visited. In one particular place there was a "beach party" event, and people appeared to be dancing. (It was weird; every few minutes a bunch of avatars would leap up and dance all at the same time. I could not figure out how they were communicating).

How, exactly, does music work?

Along the same lines, if I have a microphone attached to my PC, can I use it to actually talk to people, as opposed to typing?

Basic stuff

In order to talk to people you would need either a streaming music account somewhere or an external program like skype.

Streaming music:
Each parcel can host a link to music that is playing off a site somewhere, like www.shoutcast.com for example. If someone's property area is split into 4 different parcels, that area can host up to 4 different links to music or sounds (like ambient wind, birds etc..).

"llPlaySound":
Sound effects can be played from objects or at locations by objects and thus could also play music as well.

Dancing:
Dancing is a specific animation, or animations that play on your character (Avatar). They can be set off by you or linked to say a radio object that would syncronize everyone to dance at the same time.

Hope that helps, - Jolan

If you press Control-P the preferences dialog while come up, showing a number of tabs, one of which is the Audio and Video tab.

Clicking on the Audio and Video tab shows some options that affect whether you hear the music streams that some parcels play.

The options are:
Mute Audio
Mute Audio When Window Minimized
Play Streaming Music When Available (uses more bandwidth)
Play Streaming Video When Available (used more bandwidth)

To hear parcel music streams, the Mute Audio option should be unchecked, while the Play Streaming Music box needs to be checked.

With those set correctly, a Music Control should appear near the bottom of the screen above the blue buttons and the chat bar if the chat bar is showing when you are on a parcel which is playing a music stream.

The music control has three parts, the volume slider on the left , the Stop Media control in the middle, and the Play Media control on the right.

There should generally be a music stream in the main sandbox sims, or at any popular club that has people dancing.

Sometimes the music control will appear, indicating the parcel has a stream url set, but no music plays. This could mean whatever should be sending the stream is having trouble or it might mean the parcel music stream url is set wrong.

There is no built in "Voice Chat" in Second Life There are numerous threads in these forums debating the pros and cons of including such a feature.

There are teamspeak, ventrillo and possibly some other voice chat servers used by folks in Second Life Using the Search button, groups tab, keyword Voice will locate some groups that do voice chat.

Cristiano Midnight's SLUnicerse site at sluniverse.com has a teamspeak server and the teamspeak software available.

I believe Flipper Peregrine has a ventrillo chat system running. There are others but those are the two I know of offhand.

Also, another few things I've figured out:

If you buy your plot of First Land (and you can do the same on any land you own) you can set up a station to play on your own plot of land. One of the tabs on the properties sheet is labelled Media. There's a textbox for inputting a ShoutCast stream there.

Even easier, though, is getting a 1 prim Radio. Most freebie stores have these radios. You just drop it somewhere on your land (I have mine on a table in my house), click on it and chose a radio station. 1.FM plays mostly alternative rock. It's awesome.

Another thing I've seen (also at the freebie stores) are things billed as personal music players, like iPods. Apparently you wear them and they let you listen to whatever you want to as you go from zone to zone. I haven't tried one yet.

I have something similar but only for my land - used to have radios all ofer the place . Haven't heard of that iPod idea though, sounds pretty cool

- Jolan