Subject:unreadable aiffsor not aiffs

Posted by: PHATDRUMS

Date:5/25/2000 5:42:00 PM

having spent alot of time working on tracks and despite
assurances from sf tech support both directly and in these
very forums, files saved as aiffs are unreadable both by my
mac and six other macs in the studio complex where i had
flown eight thousand miles to mix (at a day rate of
12hundred dollars a day) i ask you once again why not?
please!
after wasting 48 hours in the studio we eventually
got the mac to read them by installing quicktime 4 so that
the mac could even see them then inserting them into peak
v2 and then re saving them as aiffs only to find the timing
on all but two of the loop /noises had changed by at least
.3 of a bpm (this also took a not a too small amount of
time to discover) this may not sound a lot but on sixty
tracks per song this was a nightmare not to mention very
exspensive (by the way my mac was 8000miles away or i
would have discovered this sooner)so please tell me are
sonic foundrys aiffs different to mine or am i just being
stupid as well as being very skint remember i was told
that they would work and they didnt i would just like to
know so i dont make the same mistake again and if any one
else has had this problem any advice had i been given
disinformation on any other kind of product such as a car
for instance i could have sued it has cost me in the region
of a small car so far help!
yours faithfully v newton

Subject:Re: unreadable aiffsor not aiffs

Reply by: DataCowboy

Date:5/26/2000 12:05:00 PM

Hi Victoria,

I have encountered a similiar problem that may shed light on your
problem.

The studio where we have our mastering done is Mac-based, while our
production studio is PC based. For files that we saved as AIFFs at
our production studio (in both Sound Forge and another app), we ended
up having trouble getting them read at the Mac-based studio. The files
looked fine in the Mac O/S, but when we had to pull them into Pro
Tools, Pro Tools balked at reading them, as did Peak. In the end, we
imported them as Raw Files, then removed the first bytes of the file
(now considered the first samples of the sound) to get rid of the file
header, and sometimes removed the last bytes of the file to get rid of
extra information chunks, so we were left with just the waveform data.

Our Solution: We have had no problems since we stopped bothering to
save anything we do on PCs as AIFFs, and instead used .WAV files.
Most Mac sound applications can read .WAVs, and since it is a native
Windows format on PC disks, there is no chance of anything assuming
the wrong byte order or looking for a non-existant fork file).

More elaboration: When the problem first happened, we pulled the AIFFs
into a hex editor to see if they were written incorrectly. Much to my
frustration, they were perfectly formatted RIFF AIFF files (so that
ruled out the obvious possible problem). So it is my suspicision that
the problem is entirely on the reading side of the process. I believe
the Mac and/or Mac software incorrectly reads AIFF files from PC
formatted disks. I believe that somewhere in the transfer, the O/S or
the application (most likely the application) makes an incorrect
assumption about the byte order or the header format of the file
because it is a Mac native format existing on a PC disk (PC files are
"little endian", Mac files are big "big endian" in their byte order).
I can't say I'm absolutely right, because avoiding the problem (by
useing WAVEs) was so much faster than spending my life
precisely pinpointing it, but I no one else in the local studios has
come up with another explanation.

Hex
www.thefreeside.com

Victoria Newton wrote:
>>having spent alot of time working on tracks and despite
>>assurances from sf tech support both directly and in these
>>very forums, files saved as aiffs are unreadable both by my
>>mac and six other macs in the studio complex where i had
>>flown eight thousand miles to mix (at a day rate of
>>12hundred dollars a day) i ask you once again why not?
>>please!
>> after wasting 48 hours in the studio we eventually
>>got the mac to read them by installing quicktime 4 so that
>>the mac could even see them then inserting them into peak
>>v2 and then re saving them as aiffs only to find the timing
>>on all but two of the loop /noises had changed by at least
>>.3 of a bpm (this also took a not a too small amount of
>>time to discover) this may not sound a lot but on sixty
>>tracks per song this was a nightmare not to mention very
>>exspensive (by the way my mac was 8000miles away or i
>>would have discovered this sooner)so please tell me are
>>sonic foundrys aiffs different to mine or am i just being
>>stupid as well as being very skint remember i was told
>>that they would work and they didnt i would just like to
>>know so i dont make the same mistake again and if any one
>>else has had this problem any advice had i been given
>>disinformation on any other kind of product such as a car
>>for instance i could have sued it has cost me in the region
>>of a small car so far help!
>> yours faithfully v newton
>>

Subject:Re: unreadable aiffsor not aiffs

Reply by: LanceL

Date:5/26/2000 12:18:00 PM

There really shouldn't be any issues reading the .aif files on the
Mac. I think most Mac sound editors should either see the .aif
extension or read the header of the file to know what they're dealing
with. There is an AIFF Typer utility available from SF's downloads
page that allows for correct filetyping, should your sound editor not
see the files correctly.

As for the process changing tempo, I don't think I trust QuickTime
when it comes to handling audio files. I've saved basic MIDI tracks
as AIFFs using QuickTime MI, and I've found very slight timing flaws
and cut-offs that have made me decide to use something else to do
click tracks.


Lance L.
Sonic Foundry Tech Support

Subject:RE: Re: unreadable aiffsor not aiffs

Reply by: robotnik

Date:3/12/2002 11:22:18 AM

When opening AIFF's in Peak (or anything else on MAC) that were saved from a PC, they 'convert' instead of just 'opening'. This is most likely because the resource is set to AIFC instead of AIFF (as is it is with AIFF's saved from Peak).

If the statement by DataCowboy holds true (that SF saves perfectly formatted RIFF AIFF files), then changing the resource to AIFF from AIFC (which is what they are set to when transferred from PC) should allow them to open with out 'converting'.

There are several resources conversion programs that will let you drop a folder of files and convert the res to AIFF from AIFC. My guess is that is what the AIFF Typer utility available from SF's downloads is doing.