With so many music files, news clips, speeches, sound effects and other audio files on the Internet, finding the ones you're looking for can get tricky. Fortunately, search sites have begun indexing audio files, much as they do Web sites, to make it easier to find precisely what you want to hear.

Yahoo (audio.search.yahoo.com) is the latest, and perhaps the largest, site to offer audio searches. With it, you can locate specific music, sound effects and other audio, such as speeches and podcasts or audio blogs.

Yahoo's audio search works similarly to its Web search. Simply type your search term and hit Enter. You get a list of results, which may be overwhelming. That's where the site's additional search options come in handy. Using them, you can limit the results to music or other files. You can also specify if the search term is an artist, album or song title. For further refined results, click the More Options button.

Yahoo lists songs available for a fee from numerous music download sites, as well as free audio files that are posted legally.

GoFish (www.gofish.com) helps you search for songs, podcasts and audiobooks. You can do a general search or limit your search to one type of file. Simply enter your search phrase and click GoFish.

Additionally, GoFish will search song lyrics. If you know a few words from the song, use them in your search.

The search results are neatly organized by artist, album, song and audiobook. Clicking on a link opens a list of stores selling the audio file. It shows the file type, player compatibility and price. There are also links for purchasing the music on CD, if a disc is available.

Unlike the other sites, America Online's Singingfish (www.singingfish.com) only indexes free files. Included are songs, newscasts and other audio files that are posted legally to the Internet.

Singingfish allows you to limit your search to specific file formats with categories that help you limit the type of content. Some files can be downloaded to your computer. However, others are streaming audio. This means you must connect to the site to listen to the files.

Blinkx (www.blinkx.com) uses speech recognition technology to search audio. Blinkx doesn't search music files, only podcasts and television newscasts. The site clearly states that it is in "beta" or testing. And it definitely is, as using it can be frustrating.

Blinkx supposedly "listens" to the audio file and recognizes the content. Simply enter your search term. Blinkx searches files' content for mention of the term. The results page displays the audio files for download.

AltaVista (www.altavista.com) and Lycos (www.lycos.com) have also offered audio searches for some time. Expect other sites to follow Yahoo and AOL's lead. Google (video.google.com) offers video searches.

A word of warning: As with any other Web search, audio searches can turn up pornographic content. Explicit files are indexed just like other audio files. There may be no indication that files are explicit. Singingfish, AltaVista and Lycos allow you to filter out objectionable content, but their filters are not perfect.

Also, remember that these sites can list copyrighted files. Downloading such files without paying for them is illegal, regardless of how they are found.