Importing 24 bit WAV files

[Gordon Wildman]

I agreed to edit a project where a multitracked live event has been supplied to me on a hard drive with track files in 24-bit WAV format. I had assumed that Microeditor's ability to work with 24-bit files included importing 24-bit WAV files. It turns out that this is not the case and I am following up on Dave's suggestion that I turn to you good folks for work-around ideas.

I am currently using version 5.2b, soon to upgrade to v5.5.

I am aware of the possibility of manually editing the header of each file to turn them into Microeditor sound files. This is impractical, though not impossible. The live event comprised two shows, each with 18 pieces of music of 12 mono track each (432 discrete files). Another subsequent show resulted in about 150 additional files. Files vary in length from about 2 min per track (in sets of 12) to about 12 minutes.

Does anyone know of utility programs or another editing product that will permit importation into Microeditor?

I solicit and welcome all ideas. A feasible solution may benefit all of us. This issue may walk in your studio some day.

Thanx for your response.

Gordon Wildman
Wildman Music Group
ghwildman@aol.com
801-262-1576

[geezer]

----I recall an earlier thread here on the forum (which you should be able to find pretty easily since the total number of posts is not too large) wherein Charles Lawson stated that the native .sf format in MicroEditor was identical to the 32bit format that lives in CoolEdit....He stated, as I recall, that a fairly simple header edit allowed communication between the two....He may respond directly to an e-mail.

There are a number of inexpensive programs on the market that deal pretty well with multitrack files...The tools in Nuendo (a little more expensive) are similar to MicroEditor. The multitrack version of Cool Edit (Pro) will, I'm sure, import things well, but I have never used it for editing, only file conversions (mostly .aif and mp3), which even the cheap version (CE 2000) does extremely well, and can be set up easily for batch conversions.

Are you sure that Medit doen't recognize 24bit .wav? This is surprising to me. Where did the original files come from (what program or hard disk recorder)?...That may have more to do with your problem, and could lead to an easy solution....I am familiar with the MX2424 and am slowly becoming more familiar with Nuendo, so might be able to figure some stuff out.

[admin]

The simplest way we can think of is to use MicroEditor to create a zero "sound" length SF file of the sample rate and channels that correspond to the wav files. You can do this by Right clicking the Record Icon and create the file with the right parameters and do not record into it. The file will have 1024 bytes in it.

Then use the Microsoft DOS copy command to append the wav file DATA ONLY to the SF "header" file. I believe the Microeditor manual discusses the length of the .wav file header. If I remember correctly, you will have to start copying from the .wav file AFTER the number of bytes in the header. If you are one byte off, your channels will be swapped, so be very careful.

This COPY operation will write a new file, so you can use the SF "header" file over and over. The DOS batch files support a FOR loop command that works with directories. Thus, it should be possible to write a batch file that does the WAV to SF conversion above for all wav files in a diretory.

Thus, xxx.wav could be converted as xxx.wav.sf. However, this assumes that all wav files are of the same sample rate and channels, or that the sample rate and channels can be determined by the file name in a way that the batch file can support. If not, move each different group of files to different directories, and create a SF header only file for each.

Once you have the 24-bit WAV files converted to SF files, you can mix and process them in Microeditor 5.3 or higher, staying in 24-bits throughout.

We are looking for example 10 second long 24-bit .wav files that we can analize and add 24-bit wav (Broadcast WAV?) support into Microeditor.