levenson@emerald.rutgers.edu (Joel Levenson) (07/31/90)
I have a question that I hope someone can help me with. I would like to point out, however, that if you are not going to respond to this question with a helpful response...I do NOT want to hear from you. I am not trying to be rude, however, the last few times I have posted a question I have gotten many helpful responses, but there is always that ONE person who must prove once again that some people must constantly try to put other people down in order to make them feel superior. Anyway, on to my question. I just purchased a Sound Blaster card for my IBM. I would like to digitize some sounds and port them over to a macintosh. The easiest way for me to do this is through my UNIX account. Here is the problem. When I uploaded the sound file to UNIX, the Macintosh refused to read the file becasue it was an "UNIX(TM) created file" and would not play on the Mac. Is ther a way for my IBM files to be successfully sent to a Mac? I know MAC files can be successfully transferred to an IBM (i.e. sound files, MAC pictures, etc...) can this process be reversed? Please mail me any help that you can. I would appreciate it. Thank you. -- +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ INTERNET: levenson@topaz.rutgers.edu "64? Where did 64 come into it? I hear you cry. Well, 64 is 8 squared, don't you see? Ask a silly question, get a silly answer." - Tom Lehrer
rpA-Inc@cup.portal.com (RP and Ainc) (08/07/90)
>I just purchased a Sound Blaster card for my IBM. I would like to >digitize some sounds and port them over to a macintosh. The easiest >way for me to do this is through my UNIX account. Here is the >problem. > >When I uploaded the sound file to UNIX, the Macintosh refused to read >the file becasue it was an "UNIX(TM) created file" and would not play >on the Mac. > >Is ther a way for my IBM files to be successfully sent to a Mac? > >I know MAC files can be successfully transferred to an IBM (i.e. sound >files, MAC pictures, etc...) can this process be reversed? Please >mail me any help that you can. I would appreciate it. Thank you. *********************** I tried this (unsuccessfully I might add) trying all the permutations between Mac, SPARCstation and PC with SoundBlaster. The problems were as follows: - ADPCM-style compression should *NOT* be performed on material intended for transportation. Everyone has a different notion of what ADPCM is and how the information about it is encoded in the file header. I would suggest not trying anything with compression turned on. Also, things like space compression should not be used. Raw data seems to be the easiest for handling. - The sampling rates have to be matched across the board. The SoundBlaster software that I had allowed sampling at a few fixed frequencies (which did not include 22 KHz, the highest sampling rate on the Mac). Even though the blurb I got on SB said it was capable of 22KHz, the software only went as high as 13KHz. The SPARCstation samples at 44KHZ but drops things down to 8KHz for storage (aaargh). So things get a little strange. - Sound on the MAC is usually in the form of SND resources. You would need a player program to read a datafile full of sound. And these sound files better have all the headers properly in place. See the MacRecorder manual about their sound file format. Files moved directly from PC to Mac would almost certainly not work. - Apple is pushing the Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) for which I understand there are Amiga to Mac converter programs. You might get lucky if you get the source and be able to translate other formats to the Mac. - My advice: without custom software, forget about it. I ended up returning the SB for a refund since its audio quality was not up to par as advertised and the software seemed to be a first attempt at programming by someone. They were nice enough to include information on the SB file format in the manual. However, they neglected to mention whether the decoding of the file header information was performed by the playback software or the hardware (all tests seemed to indicate it was in hardware). So you're pretty much stuck with their file format. IBM, I hear, is very interested in new audio technologies and is working on some sort of a PS/2 standard. That should help make life easier, since pretty much every major personal (and lower-end workstation) manufacturer now includes audio hardware... If anyone has any advice on other audio hardware for the PC, I would appreciate getting mail on it (I don't read this group often enough). Thanks Ramin Firoozye' rp&A Inc. San Francisco, CA.