Music For Web, Compression Options

[add9]

Hi
I like this forum. So many interesting questions and answers.
I haven't read every post so I am not sure if this has been up before, but......

I have been asked to make the music for a new online-adventure-game.
No problem, love to do it, but HOW???

When I bounce down my arrangement it is usually 60-70 MB in waw-format. Way to big for the web.
Mp3's can be used in a few places, but is also too big.

Is there anyone who have experiences in compressing large stereo files down to "nothing" without loosing too much quality?

I have just started to experimenting with Flash.
Is there a better program?
Do you have any good tips for me, please...?


*tearing out her hair*

[Synthetic]

also consider reducing your sample rate from 44100khz to something like 22000khz is another option. If you use a filter or shelf EQ... you can roll off a little of the frequency at the top end and same on the bottem end and then use a compressor on the whole file and it still should sound ok but you will not have quite the dynamic range it once had. Also considering reducing bit depth from 16 to 12 or 8 bits maybe too. I know as an artist or musician you want the best sound quality possible but if you have to reduce file size... then something has to give

another idea is try to develop smaller looped material... create something that sounds interesting by layering things and make a turnaround sort of at the end so that when it loops is seems almost seemless... then use a few of these smaller files for different scenes or areas of the game rather than one big file. This is something I noticed in some of the smaller marketed games.