HammerSound is a web-site focusing on computer music and sound creation. The current target audience is computer musicians using a SoundFont compatible soundcard (like the SoundBlaster Live!, the AWE-range of soundcards, and several others). The site was created by Thomas Hammer in December 1997. Since then, several others have contributed ideas, content and infrastructure.
"A brief History of HammerSound" - A collection of news from before April 12th 2000 can be found here.
The long-term goal of this site, is to be
The first short-term goal is to establish HammerSound on the web by providing interesting content and making people know that the site exists. To make people know the site exist, I depend on other (similar) sites to link to HammerSound. If you have a sound-related site (or if you just want to support this initiative), please make room for a link to HammerSound. Take a look below for instructions.
Thomas Hammer is a Master of Science in Computers and has been creating sounds and sound-related software for more than 10 years. Thomas Hammer is R&D manager in "Systems In Motion", he can be reached by email to thammer@pvv.org. This site is being produced on his spare time.
Some Statistics
In the period February 1998 to July 1998, 10.000 different people have visited HammerSound (that's counting the different hosts that have accessed the site, not just the number of accesses - which of course is a lot higher). There has been 35.000 downloads from the SoundFont Library, the latest month (July) at an average of 300 downloads a day. The most popular SoundFont is Ian Wilson's 'Vintage Dreams Waves' with 2.500 downloads.
In August 1998, 3.600 different people visited HammerSound. There was a total of 14.000 downloads at an average of 450 downloads a day.
In September 1998, 5.400 different people visited HammerSound. There was a total of 23.500 downloads at an average of 780 downloads a day.
(Meanwhile, the number of visits and downloads are steadily rising...)
In June 1999, 16.000 different people visited HammerSound at an average of 530 a day. There was a total of 90.000 downloads at an average of 3.000 downloads a day.
[July 1999] If you'd like a look behind the curtains, you can check out this script which processes the current download log and tries to come up with some useful numbers. The script counts the number of times every unique host has accessed a uniqe soundfont (that is: if a host tries to download the same soundfont several times (oh how I hate GetRight and GoZilla ;), only the first time is counted in the statistics). The script lists filenames only, so the output is a little bit cryptic.
If the HammerSound site gets more users, the site will improve - with more new soundfonts, more articles and more activity on the MessageBoard. If you want this to happen, make a link to HammerSound on your page.
The url for HammerSound is "http://listen.to/HammerSound/". (Note: Please use this url and not the url for any of the mirror sites)
Below are some images you can use together with the HTML code for the link. Right-click on the image you want, and save it using the filename listed below the image. Upload the image to your webserver and insert the HTML code listed below the image on a suitable web page.
For those of you with graphical skills: I could need some help designing more banners and buttons. If you make a banner or button for linking to HammerSound, I will list it here, so others might use it too. Thanks a lot!
Banner
Filename: HSLinkBanner1.jpg
HTML code: <a href="http://listen.to/HammerSound/"
target="_top"><img src="HSLinkBanner1.jpg"
alt="HammerSound" border="0" WIDTH="468"
HEIGHT="66"></a>
Button 1
Filename: HSLinkButton1.gif
HTML code: <a href="http://listen.to/HammerSound/"
target="_top"><img src="HSLinkButton1.gif" width="88"
height="31" alt="HammerSound" border="0"></a>
Button 2
Filename: HSLinkButton2.gif
HTML code: <a href="http://listen.to/HammerSound/" target="_top"><img
src="HSLinkButton2.gif" width="88" height="31"
alt="HammerSound" border="0"></a>
Privacy Statement
Aside from the MessageBoard and the SoundFont Library, HammerSound does not collect any personal information (name, address, phone, email, etc), however some non-personal information is collected by the web-server (date and time, ip-addresses, what pages are viewed and what files are downloaded). This information is only used internally for computing statistics. In the MessageBoard and the SoundFont Library, some personal information is collected (name, email address, homepage). This information is made publicly available on the web through the MessageBoard (that is the nature of most message boards, and news servers) and the SoundFont Library - as you know if you have visited these pages, so anyone can see it. If you don't want your name & email address displayed, just leave the fields blank or use an alias ("Anonymous Coward" or similar ;-).
Survey
If you've read this far, you probably have
the time to take this obscure well hidden survey. Click here!