{{redirect, WP:AUDIO, WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia, Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

Media files on Wikipedia

Some Wikipedia articles include sound or video files, that can be played on almost all personal computers. However, your computer must have the right software. If your computer does not automatically play these files when you click on them, downloading and installing free software from the Internet can enable it to do so. Sound files on Wikipedia generally use the

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder ( codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in con ...

or MP3 audio format, and video files use the VP9 or

Theora Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container ...

format, both contained in either

WebM WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video and the HTML5 audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponso ...

or Ogg files. However,

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

, iOS, and older

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

do not support these formats by default, and depend on software to play the files. When you use Wikipedia in a browser this software is integrated by default. Music files may occasionally use the

format (.MID or .MIDI extension). Wikipedia can play a MIDI file by converting it to digital audio, or depending on how the MIDI file is linked it may rely on your computer's browser and hardware to play the MIDI file.

Directions on installing software >>

''For help making and converting video and audio into the format usable on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Creation and usage of media files.''

Media help