Please keep in mind that I am not suggesting that this is the idea way to use this media. I am simply showing you an example. I am indebted to Joe Kasser of UMUC's Graduate School for showing me how to do this. It seems to feel much more personal when the professor introduces him or herself at the beginning of a course using sound and there are many specific teaching and learning goals which could benefit from the addition of sound (surely you have seen web materials which are only straight text that goes on for screen after screen..... ugh!)
I was able to produce this audio clip after about 2-3 hours of fooling around with a few pieces of inexpensive software and hardware.
You can then directly link to that file from within a web page. However, it is more efficient to use a Realmedia Server (also free), but this needs to be set up by your computing administrator.
What you hear is an audio file that "streams" to your PC. This means that when you click on the audio link, your computer does not have to download the entire file before it begins to play. The audio "plays" as the file downloads. To give you an idea of what this means, my audio file is 650,000 bytes (pretty big!). However, because it "streams", it begins to play within a few seconds. (One of the problems with "streaming" is that it can be interupted by network congestion. This might happen to you when you try to listen to the clip.)