Raw Import Help for very old files

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

Hi…I have some old Mac sound files, circa System 6 or System 7, which were recorded with the built-in sound recorder. No software I’ve tried has been able to import them, so I thought I’d try the Raw Import feature in Audacity. The problem is there are a zillion permutations of the various settings. Any idea how to approach this? I’ve searched to find out the sound and file format of these old files, but to no avail. Another complication is that the files were stored for a time on a PC, for a couple of years when I was without a Mac.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

2

You tried the usual suspects, Open With > QuickTime Player or iTunes. Did they say anything past “Unable to recognize.” Did you get the file plus the Resource Fork and the other stuff that Mac used to put in the background?


http://mac.downloadatoz.com/play-sound/

Play Sound is a simple, no fuss that audio player supports QuickTime sound files (for example, AIFF or MP3 files), Classic Mac OS System 7 sound files (files with a file type 'sfil " that contain ‘snd resources’), or any ‘snd’ resources embedded into any file.

Koz

3

I know no free program to convert SFIL if QuickTime won’t handle it. There is a FileJuicer demo ( http://echoone.com/filejuicer/ ) if you can do the conversions inside seven days.

Otherwise you can play the files in Play Sound and record the playback .


Gale

4

Thanks for the replies…I finally got to testing the files with Filejuicer and Play Sound, but to no avail.

I think the problem is that the resource fork is missing from the original files (copied from Mac to PC many years ago). I just tried testing some sound files using an old Mac with System 8 on it, and had the same thing happen when copying files to a USB drive formatted as FAT. On that experiment, a folder called “resources.frk” was created, and while these files function correctly on the Mac (from the USB drive), on my modern Mac these are ID’d as “unix executable” files, which I think is another term for unrecognizable string of bits.

Further exacerbating this is that the file location where I originally place these files years ago, has no “resource.frk” folders inside.

Unless I get any other ideas, I think my next thing to do is find out how to recover missing resource forks, or find out what the specs are for a raw data input for sound files of this era.

Thanks again.