Program For Converting a Ton of Samples

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

Hi All,

So I spent today organizing a ton of my samples and then I transferred them over to an SD card so I could use them on my akai s6000. After the 2hr file transfer was done I pop the SD card into the sampler and remember that all my samples are 24bit wav files and the s6000 can’t play 24 bit samples, only 16 bit…

What program do you all recommend I use that does a good job converting from 24bit wav to 16bit wav that I could apply to a batch of a couple thousand samples? I don’t mind paying for something as long as it does a good job.

Thanks!

EDIT:
See my post below for my final solution. I ended up using sox on my mac. Thanks everyone!

#2

I think apple iTunes did this in a Bach process the last time I used it, which was about 10 years ago.

Audacity does it too.

1 Like
#3

I use Twisted Wave.

2 Likes
#4

I think I would opt for sox. However it’s a command line utility, and not if you’re not a programmer you might find it challenging.

5 Likes
#5

There is a “batch file converter” in Reaper that I use all the time for this.

5 Likes
#6

Amadeus lite or pro has a batch file converter - quite useful.

(sry Mac only I believe)

#7

https://sbooth.org/Max/

used to use this back in the day, and nice to see the dev has created a 64bit binary in 2020.

2 Likes
#8

Are you a PC/Linux/macOS user?

1 Like
#9

I have a PC and a Mac, so either is fine, but my samples are currently on the PC.

#10

I’m happy with the free Media Human Audio Converter.

1 Like
#11

Lol, not a single one of you uses the same thing as another :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes
#12

Wavosaur or Audacity can both do it, pretty quick too.

1 Like
#13

Audacity can manage a couple thousand samples ? How many can it realistically do in one go by this method ?

EDIT: Ah … I see that there’s an ‘apply chain’ thing that my audacity doesn’t have … looks like I need to update.

#14

I’ll throw in ffmpeg + custom script just for fun.

But I would probably use Reaper, the demo version works just fine for this. Haven’t tried thousands at a time though.

1 Like
#15

+1 for Media Human Converter

#16

ffmpeg or sox then … the suggested apps here give me eye cancer. Personally I use Myriad …but they sold their app and it’s not available at this time

#17

I am a linux user but even on windows you can do that with powershell calling sox or ffmpeg, or using the Linux subsystem for windows or cygwin to call those using a one liner command with bash, find and the 2 aforementionned programs.

Sox and ffmpeg are installable with chocolatey, making things even easier.

2 Likes
#18

Thanks everyone, it looks like I have a lot to look at now :slight_smile:. Is there any difference in quality between these programs when doing 24bit to 16bit conversion like there is when doing SRC?

#19

os x also has the built in afconvert command. i’ve used this many times for batch converting audio.

https://ss64.com/osx/afconvert.html

#20

Fission for me.