JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques Recording Studio and Gear Forum Saving audio files for use in another platform...

A simple question from a simple guy:

I have audio on ADAT, which I've just figured out how to get into my PC, using Cubase. Took me a day & a half to cross that river. Anyway, there's a guy across town that needs that audio to do some touch-up work at his place-- and I think he's running Pro Tools on a Mac.

I would just ask him about it, but I'm not sure how to get in touch with him yet and I'd like to get this stuff ready for him as soon as I can...

So, my question is this-- how do I (or even can I) save these tracks for cross-platform use? The easiest way seems to be to save them as a 'song,' which, in Cubase anyway, keeps all the tracks synced together. But if I save them this way to a disc, would a Mac user be able to open them?

I think I can save each track individually as a WAV, but then they'd all have to be reassembled later on.

Dang these 'puters. Thanks y'all...


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Shandy Lawson

Folk-noir Ballads and Acoustic Brawls
http://www.shandylawson.com

You should be able to transfer the files as WAV files via ftp, and, they should be able to be imported as such.
To ease the the large size involved in a WAV file, use Shorten or Monkey's Audio. Both are lossless compression utilitites.
Another option for transfer would be to burn the WAV files onto a CD of DVD and mail them.
With additional work being needed on the song you won't want to send the song file, rather the individual tracks unless you have it mixed to your satisfaction and want the mixdown mastered.

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DakLander

Hi, Shandy,

I may be wrong but here's what I think (my first mistake?):

Saving your files as a 'song' probably won't work for him because that's most likely a proprietary format for Cubase; Pro Tools probably won't recognize it, though PT might have its own version. (Cool Edit Pro, for instance, has "sessions.") In any event, you'd have to provide him with both the 'song' and the individual track files for that song.

So, presuming that won't work and that Pro Tools for a Mac won't work with .wav files, see if your software will let you save your .wav files as .aif (which is basically the Mac equivalent to a .wav). (Cool Edit Pro -- and I use a PC -- lets me do this which is how I've been able to collaborate with another of the DX clan who uses a Mac.) If it doesn't...I dunno.

Good luck,

Peter

Oh Hey! Good point Peter.
I somehow missed that remark about Pro Tools so in that case, yeah, AIFF would be the way to go.
Monkey's Audio won't work with Mac so that's moot.
Shorten does but I don't know if their newest version will compress AIFF. The earlier version did not.

Anyone here know?

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DakLander

Well, if these tracks that you laid over from ADAT are all continuous recordings that all start at "zero time", then you can just copy the WAV files to CDR and give it to your ProTools user friend, since PT for Mac can import WAV files. He can drag the tracks from the regions list into the timeline and bump them up to the beginning.
If your tracks are split into a lot of regions, then, you'll have to bounce them individually to new composite tracks first.

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Later,

Pat

Hey, thanks all!

Good to hear from you, Peter!

Good points, all around... Pat, I think that was what I needed to know. As little experience as I have with PC audio, I have even less with Macs. Knowing that they're WAV-friendly makes it a lot easier.

I figure when I burn a disk for him I can just create a folder for each song & then put the individual tracks in the folder... not sure what industry standard is, but it makes sense to me. And yes, each track is continuous, so it should be easy enough. Thanks!

Pat's idea is best. Make sure that all the audio files start at the same point. Then it won't matter cause the Mac reads all formats. Then like Pat says, he'll only have to import the tracks.

Do not send them over the net with any kind of compression. You will lose audio quality, even with the lossless formats. Not worth your hard earned bux attempting to save drive space.

Jody

Gotcha. Thanks, Jody... I'm going to put these files on CDR and let the artist I did the recording for hand deliver them.

Hey Shandy,

Are you going to use the newer Devil in the Bonfire Picture on the new album?

Brian

Hey Brian! 'Fraid the new evil fire pic didn't make it... I pretty much handed graphic control over to a professional designer (a guy's gotta know his limitations ) but I made sure the fire pic was in the materials I handed to her. Maybe next time...

Guess what! A Mac can convert about any PC crap that you throw at it! Try that with your Winfuct piece of crap!

Charming.

That's no way to convert me, man.

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Later,

Pat

Well said Shandy, Charming. I might be a Mac nut, but it's downright Charming to read a response like that.

Sorry for the earlier flame. I just get so tired of Gates and the boys inventing some new file format just to ensure incompatibilty with th rest of the world, and his earlier systems. They don't improve anything but their bank balances.

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