Welcome to the Auscultation Assistant!

This site has been designed primarily for second-year medical students to help them appreciate the different audio characteristics of heart murmurs and breath sounds. The site is self-explanatory to use, but keep the following thoughts in mind while viewing the pages.

1)  Using this site will require a computer equipped with a sound card and speakers. The sounds were optimized for playback on 150W external speakers, and may be distorted when played through a standard internal PC speaker.

2)  The beating heart graphics are not intended to match the pace of the murmur. Don’t try to figure out systole and diastole by watching the animations. They are only there for layout purposes and do not signify anything important.

3)  The heart sounds were maximized for smooth playback on a Pentium 133 MHz. If you are hearing beats coming too quickly, or too slowly, it may be due to Internet issues or to the speed of your machine. The pacing of the beats should not be interpreted as significant, only the murmurs being demonstrated.

4)  You will notice that the murmurs play continuously in the background while you are reading about the pathophysiology. This was an intentional choice. In order to have the murmurs play only on demand, a reasonable length of beats would have to be downloaded to your machine, at least eight to ten cycles, so that you could appreciate the cadence of the rhythm. This would make the sound files extremely large and the site very slow. To minimize download times, the sounds have been shortened to a two or three beat cycle, and looped continuously so that you can pick out the subtle aspects of the murmur via repetition. If you want to read about a murmur without having it play in the background, the easiest solution would be to turn off your computer’s speakers.

5)  The text and graphics of this site were designed for best viewing with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or higher on a monitor with 800 x 600 resolution. Windows users with monitors set for 600 x 480 resolution will have extremely large text and difficult to view pages. You can change your monitor resolution for Windows machines by using the display program in the control panel folder and setting it to 800 x 600.

6)  The audio files in this site are standard .au and .wav formats. Using Netscape Navigator 4.0 or higher with a standard IBM-compatible machine should automatically work. Macintosh users may need to download a plug-in file to hear the sounds. A recommended  plug-in which works well for both PC and Macintosh is Beatnik. If you are using Netscape Communicator 4.0 or higher, you may need to download the multimedia add-on, which can be found here.

7)  If you are still not hearing the sounds, be sure to check the following:

      A)  Make sure you have a sound card in your computer. For Macintosh, this is built-in. For Windows users, you can use the system program in the control panel folder and click on the device manager tab. If you have a card installed, check that it is loaded with the proper driver. 

      B)  Make sure that your volume is turned all the way up. For Macintosh, there is a sound file in the control panel folder which adjusts volume. Windows users will see a speaker icon in the lower right corner of the screen. Double-clicking that will bring up volume control. If you have external speakers, be sure they are connected and turned on with high volume.

      C)  Go to the introduction page for this site and notice if a dialog box appears stating that you cannot listen to the audio file. If no dialog box appears, then the file is being interpreted correctly by your machine, and the problem is either that your sound card or speakers are not working properly, or that the volume control is set too low. One tester has reported success using Internet Explorer instead of Netscape Navigator.

6)  Enjoy the site! Be sure to visit the credits page if you want to give any feedback on how useful this site was to you.