Note: The "help" discussion below assumes that you can see the "Wie, bitte?" materials on your computer screen (text and graphics), but that you are not able to play sounds. If you are unable to get to ANY of the materials and your screen looks totally confusing, contact us immediately!

Most people in the course are immediately able to play the sounds used in our course on their computers. Very seldom does the problem originate at our end, although it is possible for servers to go down and for server files to go bad or be deleted; but that happens maybe once a year. Occasionally a defective CD-ROM shows up in a stack of blank disks, and, also occasionally, we slip up in the copy process. That happens maybe once every couple hundred disks. So if you are not able to play the sounds on your computer, it is very likely that the problem lies with your computer. Here is a list of things to check for, starting with weeding out the easy problems.
Click here if our sounds play from your disc on some other computer, but not your own.
Click here if your computer definitely plays other sounds, but not ours.

1. If you are using the CD-ROM, try your disc in a university computer lab or some other convenient computer - by yourself, with your instructor or with Dr. Fischer (email link).
-First go to the CosmoLingua/ Wie, bitte? website from the same computer and try to play some sounds. When you go to a screen that has sounds, you should see the usual sort of sound-controller on the screen where you click to play sounds: symbols for "play," "pause," "stop," etc., similar to the controls of a cassette or CD player. If you don't, that computer also has problems withsounds. It would be nice of you to tell its owner so, but that doesn't help you solve your own problem. Find another lab and go through the same step. Most or all university labs are equipped for sound playback now, though the computer itself may not have speakers attached to it; you may need to use earphones plugged into the computer.
-When you have a computer that plays sounds from the CosmoLingua/ Wie, bitte? website, try your disc in it. If the disc works there, the problem is somewhere in or with your computer. If the disc doesn't work in that computer, you probably have a bad disc. We'll give you a new one and, if at all possible, go with you to check it on a university computer.

2. If you've gotten through step 1 and it now appears that the problem is with your computer, there are several possible problems. There are many kinds of computers (Dell, Gateway, Apple, etc.), several operating systems (Unix, Windows, MacOS, Linux), and several browsers (Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari) that claim to be able to display the kind of content you are using in our course.
But that's not all of it. After people acquire their computers, they (or the people they give the job to) set them up in an incredible variety of situations and configurations, and sometimes the setup intentionally or unintentionally blocks audio - completely, or just certain kinds of audio.
In this section you walk through the several major problem areas. It is very likely that you will solve your sound problem after you check your computer here, following these steps:
-Are you using a Windows PC that is more than just a few years old? If so, it may not be able to play sounds at all, and it's time for a new computer, or you may need to use university labs. But you may be able to add a sound card to your computer; advice here is beyond our responsibility. Macintosh users: all Macintoshes, even the oldest, can play sounds. But some people mute the sound play on their computers (more about that soon).
-If you're pretty sure your computer can play sounds, check it out for certain with an audio (music) CD or other sound device, or a sound from the internet. (If you share a computer, don't neglect this step: some users disable sounds when they have the chance to.)
-At this point it is necessary to ask some embarrassing questions that address problems that have really occurred: Does your computer have a loudspeaker or other sound output facility? Is that device connected / enabled? Does it have live power? If you're using earphones, are they connected and (if they have a switch) is it on? Check that with sound sources you are sure of.

3. If your computer does not play our sounds, but it does play other sounds, then there are several possible problems. The easiest sounds to play on computers are those from audio CDs. But our sounds, and many others on the internet, are sound files, not sound tracks like those on commercial CDs. Computers use several special tools to play sound files. Most recent computers come out of the box equipped and set up to play those various kinds of sound file. Rarely they don't, but it can still happen, and sometimes the people who set up computers disable or even delete those resources.
-The next step is to check whether your computer is configured to handle the sounds that your computer can then play. If on the screen there appears to be an area or button for you to click on to play a sound, but the button doesn't work or you see something like a distorted box, then your computer, has been configured to attempt to play our sounds with some other tool than the one it should be using. These tools are called "plug-ins" or "helper applications" or something similar - it depends on the computer. If you sort of understand what we mean here, read on beyond the next few sentences. If you do not at all understand what to do now, you need to get help from someone who does. Many people know how to make those adjustments to play the sounds and other media they download from the internet. Your instructor can probably help, but it may be faster to talk to a friend.
-If you "sort of" understand about plug-ins, here is our advice: Our sounds are in the .mp3 format and were intended to be played by QuickTime, which is one of the major applications for delivering digital sound. There are many fancy ways to get sound files to play, but the simplest way to deal with the problem is to download and install the plug-in that is intended for that particular sound format. If you have a Windows PC from a major manufacturer, it is almost certain that the QuickTime plug-in came with your computer. Reinstall it - if necessary, ask for help. If you have a Macintosh, it is an absolute certainty that QuickTime came with your computer, but it is barely possible that someone has interfered with it.
Here is the link to where you can download the QuickTime plug-in:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/qt/

QuickTime works on all recent PCs and all Macintoshes.

If, after you go through all this conscientiously, you still cannot play our sounds, the problem is so severe that we can't be expected to continue to try to solve it.