Streamed Voice Playback

Voice messages are stored on the Gong server. To save waiting time, the Gong system starts playing the sound before the whole file is in the computer. Before starting to play the sound a certain amount of data is buffered to minimize the occurance of delay. The image below shows how the orange line at the bottom of the timeline indicates how much data has been downloaded to the system.

If enough data is buffered the system will start playing the voice recording without waiting for the download to finish. This is indicated in the following images. In this example, the voice message is played when only 30 seconds of data is downloaded into the system.

While the voice recording is being played, the system continues to download the data. If there is not enough buffered audio, that is, the playing time (blue line) catches the buffer (orange line), the system will then wait for enough buffered audio before resuming to play the voice message.

This streaming of the voice message can shorten the waiting time even for users with a dial-up modem connection.