Ask HN: Help with a file conversion

[RiderOfGiraffes]

I've tried everything else I can think of, so I finally come here to HN in something akin to desperation.

I have a sound file from a dead Psion 5MX (RIP) and I'd very much like to convert it into a format that I can play on my Windows XP laptop, and on my SuSE 10.1 desktop. On my SuSE 8.1 (yes, yes, I know) machine it plays with this command:

  play -r 8000 -s b -c 1 -t raw -f A filename

However, on every platform I've tried, sox segfaults, or the software I have says it doesn't recognise the format. This, despite listing the Psion A-Law format specifically.

I've spent a couple of hours with Google trying to find utilities specific to the purpose, and reinstalled and recompiled sox, but, as you might guess, I've made to real progress.

I've written a small utility to convert the file using the conversion functions from A-Law to raw as given on Wikipedia, but that produces noise with a barely audible sound track underneath.

Advice welcome. I'm not, at heart, a computer person, but I program and I devise algorithms. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=822789 if you're interested in what I can do.

Questions for clarification also welcome.

So assuming you got this far, thanks for reading, and sorry if this has wasted your time.

[jacquesm]

In case anybody else ever needs this:

mv file file.wve

sox file.wve -2 -c 2 -r 44100 file.wav

lame file.wav file.mp3

Enjoy. If you have more of them send them over and I'll convert them in case you can't get the recipe to work.

I mailed you that one mp3. And I messed up the recipe, the first line of course should not have the .wve at the end of the first file argument.

[RiderOfGiraffes → jacquesm]

Many thanks - it's worked fine. I can even get the recipe to work on my machine, although I ahve to hand insert the path the the executable I built from source. That's a mystery, since I did do a "make install" but it seems that the version found on the path isn't that one.

Don't you love computers?

Anyway, the result of this should be announced here in a few days. I hope it's worth the time I, and indeed we, have wasted.

Thanks.

[khafra]

http://jackaudio.org/ claims to take the PCM output from your audio player program and save it in any of a number of formats.

[RiderOfGiraffes → khafra]

Forgive me, but I can't see how to use that to read the file I have and create a file in a different format. Maybe I'm missing something, although most likely what I'm missing is the background to understand the documentation.

It's probably a useful package, but I can't see how to make it do what I need. I am feeling slightly embarrassed about this ...

[khafra → RiderOfGiraffes]

As far as I can tell, the easiest way would be to install the library, and one of the applications using it that does what you want it to. The simplest one looks like jack_capture(1), "a small program to capture whatever sound is going out to your speakers into a file." Start capturing the data and playing the sound file at the same time, and the result should be a good copy.

(1) http://www.notam02.no/arkiv/src

[timwiseman]

It seems like there are good software suggestions made, but if they fail a last ditch effort would be to run line out from your SUSE 8.1 machine to line in on another machine (or with a sufficient soundcard the same one).

[zandorg]

Try Psiwin 2.3.

[RiderOfGiraffes → zandorg]

I might do that, although it seems overkill. The Psion is dead, I couldn't connect with the laptop because it doesn't have a serial port, and I just want a sound file (or two) converted.

It's hard to believe this problem hasn't been solved before, and it's hard to believe it's so hard to find a good solution.

More ideas still welcome - both ideas so far are workable, but non-trivial.

I appreciate the help.

[zandorg → zandorg]

Or: http://www.bioeddie.co.uk/Psion/main/Programs/pc_tools.html

Rec2wav

[RiderOfGiraffes → zandorg]

That might be the best option - I'll investigate tomorrow.

More ideas still welcome - thanks.