Using mac-made aiffs on PC problem

[Hunter]

Yo beehatches

Been doing a collab with some Mac peeps, and for some reason I can't use their non-compressed aiffs on my PC - Sonar won't open them and says "DirectShow error [0x80040218] No combination of filters could be found to render the stream"

Audacity either hard crashes and comes up with a C++ error or tries to open them as mp3 and then hangs.

Windows media player won't play them.

Any idea what I am doing wrong and how to fix it?

edit: I can use their wav files fine. Just the aiffs. Ayeee!

Hugs x

[Beardedone]

I can use Aiffs with Live but not in FLS or Sonar. I don't know about eXT since i haven't done much with audio in eXT.

[arguru]

It might be BS but... are those AIFF's made with some IntelMAC built application, it might be screwing byteorder used for AIFFs (aiff uses Motorola big-endian byte order against Intel x86 little-endian) but wtf am I talking? =) this would be a really silly bug in that app (with certain implicit irony).

[kybernaut]

guess you're working with people who use classic Mac OS?

The probleme is that older Mac apps tend to write the header information in the resource fork of the file. This resource forks gets lost when copying to a non-HFS volume.

Ask the people to send you the material either in a flat file AIFF format or, if the app in question does't offer this feature, in WAV format.

Alternatively you can open the files in an advanced audio editor such as Wavelab in RAW mode, provided you know the sampling rate and the bit depth of the files.

hope this helps!

[Lagrange]

This probably wont work but try changing the extension from aiff to aif..?? If not try posting a file or two here and I will try em out..

[tomg]

I had the same problem with some old Amiga files I recorded on my AD516s. Soundforge was my hero.

[Hunter]

OK thanks folks, will look into this.

[fmr]

Yo beehatches

Been doing a collab with some Mac peeps, and for some reason I can't use their non-compressed aiffs on my PC - Sonar won't open them and says "DirectShow error [0x80040218] No combination of filters could be found to render the stream"

Audacity either hard crashes and comes up with a C++ error or tries to open them as mp3 and then hangs.

Windows media player won't play them.

Any idea what I am doing wrong and how to fix it?

edit: I can use their wav files fine. Just the aiffs. Ayeee!

Hugs x

This can be a problem related with the media used to make the trnasfer of the files. Ask yor fellos to make ZIP files with the AIFF files inside. Anyway, if Windows Medi Player can't open them, there is some problem with the files. Which application crated them in the Mac?

[rockstar_not]

Download a copy of Goldwave, open the .aiff in Goldwave, and resave as .wav.

Problem solved. Works for me on the guy I collab with who uses Garageband.

-Scott

[Hunter]

Its OK I've had them turned into wav by one of the fruit users

[nixnutz]

guess you're working with people who use classic Mac OS?

The probleme is that older Mac apps tend to write the header information in the resource fork of the file. This resource forks gets lost when copying to a non-HFS volume.

But AIFF specifically stores everything in the data fork. The specification allows for a number of 'chunks', the first one includes sample rate and size, number of channels, etc. but the spec includes chunks for markers, looping, instrument data, midi data and for application-specific data.

The OP didn't specify which app the files came from, I guess it's possible someone would store some kind of info in a resource fork, but the spec allows for all this to be in the data itself. I copy AIFF files from my OS9 mac and they play fine in Windows Media Player though, so I don't really know what the problem is here.

I have a ton of samples in SDII format and it's a pain because with those all the info is in the resource fork and I can't use them easily on my PC. Even if someone wanted to make a converter for Samplecell instruments it might not be possible to do it on the PC side.

[tERMoBLUe]

otherwise translate with dbPowerAMP ...cu

tro

[kybernaut]

guess you're working with people who use classic Mac OS?

The probleme is that older Mac apps tend to write the header information in the resource fork of the file. This resource forks gets lost when copying to a non-HFS volume.

But AIFF specifically stores everything in the data fork. The specification allows for a number of 'chunks', the first one includes sample rate and size, number of channels, etc. but the spec includes chunks for markers, looping, instrument data, midi data and for application-specific data.

The OP didn't specify which app the files came from, I guess it's possible someone would store some kind of info in a resource fork, but the spec allows for all this to be in the data itself. I copy AIFF files from my OS9 mac and they play fine in Windows Media Player though, so I don't really know what the problem is here.

I have a ton of samples in SDII format and it's a pain because with those all the info is in the resource fork and I can't use them easily on my PC. Even if someone wanted to make a converter for Samplecell instruments it might not be possible to do it on the PC side.

Sorry, I confused it with SDII files Thanks for the correction. You can infact convert those files on a PC, if you know sample rate and bit depth. Usually you have to do a byte order swap too, because of the "endianess".

Anyway, I'm glad these days are over...