SoundEdit 16 Redux

August 22, 2005 12:22 AM

ObsoleteSoftwareFilter: Remember SoundEdit 16? Well, I need some help converting a few files.

I have about 150+ SoundEdit 16 files. Nearly all of them have multiple tracks in each file. Is there any freeware or moderately priced shareware that will read or import the SoundEdit 16 files with the multiple tracks intact? Everything I've tried thus far has not worked. Specifically, the applications don't even recognize the SoundEdit files.

My only other solution is to go into each file, manually separate the tracks out into individual files and then batch convert them through Automator (SoundEdit's support software) into aiffs or wavs. This will be time consuming. I'm looking for a shortcut.

Furthermore, what is the best format to save the final files? Aiffs or wavs? I never want to have to do this again.

posted by quadog to computers & internet (3 comments total)

You might try a Peak trial. It is a pretty useful "swiss army" knife-like sound tool.

AIFF and WAV can both store sound in an uncompressed format. A lot of media work is done on the Mac platform now, so you may as well choose uncompressed AIFF in the highest sample rate you can as an archive format.
posted by Rothko at 12:45 AM on August 22, 2005

The gold standard for audio conversion on the Mac is SoundApp, which doesn't support SoundEdit 16 files. If SoundApp can't parse them, I'm not sure if anything can.

This is just a guess, but did SoundEdit 16 store "snd" resources in the resource fork of the file? If so, you could extract the tracks using ResEdit.

On the other hand, if the tracks are uncompressed and stored in the data fork, you might have some luck with the "Import Raw" feature in Audacity.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:31 AM on August 22, 2005

Thanks for giving me a push in the right direction, guys. I'll see what Peak and Audacity can yield. It really is a pity that SoundApp doesn't play with SoundEdit files. I guess I've learned my lesson.
posted by quadog at 1:03 PM on August 22, 2005