Technical Q&As


AMT_PE 14 - AIFF-to-WAV problems (1-Aug-95)


Q I process some audio in a particular sound designer software and save my files as AIFF. The software's Get Info function tells me the files are 8-bit Linear, 22.254KHz. ResEdit tells me the file type is AIFF.

I'm using v1.1 of the Media Tool, along with the conversion utilities that ship with it; Macintosh Easy Open is not installed. I drag a file onto the To Apple Media Kit Sound utility (v1.1). I get these errors:

"This application supports only 8 bit sounds without compression! (1)"
"<filename>" cannot be read! (1)

What is the problem? The sound is 8 bit, uncompressed!

A The To Apple Media Kit Sound tool is not compatible with every sound-editing tool and sound format on the market! It may be that the sound will play back fine in your final title without converting it (even if Cross-Platform Check complains about it!) but the only way to be sure is to actually test it on both Mac and Windows.

As an alternative, we recommend that rather than saving your files as sound files and then dropping them on the To Apple Media Kit Sound utility, you get into the habit of storing your sounds in QuickTime format. There is no overhead to storing in QuickTime format, and as future versions of QuickTime support more and more sound and compression schemes, you will be able to take advantage of them.

(Note: If you are developing for Windows, always sample your sounds at 22.050 and 11.125KHz, not 22.254KHz. Windows machines are very particular about what kind of sample rates they can play back smoothly!)

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