You'll need a sound card and speakers or headphones.

We have two file formats. Windows Media audio is optimized for use with the Windows Media Player. MP3 audio is compatible with most media players, including Winamp, iTunes, Windows Media Player and Songbird.

Error messages can come up for a number of reasons. Make sure that your computer's internet connection is still working, and that your audio player is upgraded to the latest version. You might try testing another source of online audio to verify that your player is working. If everything is working, we may be a server issue that's causing the error. Use NHPR's online contact form to let us know about the problem and we'll do our best to help.

A few listeners have an issue with the playlist files we use to stream our archived audio. We are developing a new system to serve audio that will address this issue, but for now, you can avoid the problem by changing the file extension at the end of the streaming audio link. For example, an episode of The Exchange from July 1st, 2009, might have the following audio link:

http://www.nhpr.org/audio/audio/ex070109.m3u

Copy the audio URL and paste it to the address bar of your browser. From there, change the "m3u" at the end of the link to "mp3." In our example above, you would change the link to:

http://www.nhpr.org/audio/audio/ex070109.mp3

This workaround will let you access NHPR's archived audio until our new system is in place.