Import "Proprietory?" WAV

[anthonyl]

I have just received an MP4/MP3 player (ATiPix) which allows up to 30hours voice recording which I wish to use to record certain sounds.

The file produced is a .wav which plays back fine with Windows Media Player. However I wish to edit the file using Audacity and I run into problems. Audacity thinks it is a .mp3 file at first then fails with a Windows Exception error.

I get a little more progress converting first with Free Mp3 Wma Converter then importing except the sound quality is terrible, and of course I can set Audacity to record whilst playing back with Windows Media Player but the quality is also poor (echo) and the process is time consuming.

I previously had a small mp3 usb player which also produced what I assume to be a proprietory compressed .wav format which Audacity was happy with.

Can anyone suggest a good way of getting these files into Audacity for subsequent trimming and editing? I am using v1.2.6 on a laptop running Windows XP Pro SP3. I can upload a sample .wav file somewhere if that helps.

Thanks

[kozikowski]

<<<I can set Audacity to record whilst playing back with Windows Media Player but the quality is also poor (echo) and the process is time consuming.>>>

That at least is a Windows setup problem. You are either recording the built-in microphone or Mix-Out plus the direct sound, both at once.

Windows Control Panel
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... trol_Panel

Try using a different converter. Switch or Super seem to have reasonable success.

I don't think any of your formats are really MP3. The fact that Windows Media was happy with it points to them all being MP4 or varitations on h.264 MPEG4-audio.

Another desperation method is to convince Windows Media to burn a CD and then rip the CD with CDEX. This is an old Mac trick when everything is going badly.

Sometimes Windows will tell you what the file is. File > Properties > Advanced (or Extra).

Koz

[anthonyl]

<<<I can set Audacity to record whilst playing back with Windows Media Player but the quality is also poor (echo) and the process is time consuming.>>>

That at least is a Windows setup problem. You are either recording the built-in microphone or Mix-Out plus the direct sound, both at once.

Yes I suspect that the built in mic was on.

Try using a different converter. Switch or Super seem to have reasonable success.

Excellent. Switch has understood it completely. Super results in a playback that is too fast and high pitched.

I don't think any of your formats are really MP3. The fact that Windows Media was happy with it points to them all being MP4 or varitations on h.264 MPEG4-audio. Sometimes Windows will tell you what the file is. File > Properties > Advanced (or Extra).

It reports as:
Bit rate 65kbps
Audio sample size 4 bit
Channels 1 (mono)
Audio Sample rate 16KHz
Audion format Microsoft ADPCM

Is there any reason that Audacity should not have been able to import this (say Import Raw data) or are there a set of settings that I need to setup first? If I try the Microsoft ADPCM option then the Import button grays out. Is there an Audacity codec file or similar missing or is it related to protection?

[kozikowski]

Probably neither one.

4-bit, 16KHz, mono is a really bad, tight WAV format. I wouldn't be shocked to find that it's not supported. I would expect that to sound like a muffled or gritty phone call -- barely answering machine quality.

Koz

[anthonyl]

The unit is classed as a voice recorder and for both voice and recording the sounds I want it is more than passable and certainly better than the digital answering machines I've come across. Nonetheless if you have any recommendations of a low cost portable recording device which can record say up to 5hrs in a format that readily allows editing (mainly trimming) I would be please to hear. (This unit will record 30hrs though the battery will run flat after about 3 or 4hrs).