Batch amplification of PCM audio using sox - audio

I have a large number of .PCM files (248 total) that are all encoded as:
Encoding: Signed 16-bit uncompressed PCM
Byte order: Little-endian
Channels: 2 channel (stereo)
Sample rate: 44100 Hz
8 Byte header
I need to apply a -7.5 db amplification (deamplification?) to every single one of these files.
The problem I have is that all of these tracks are looped, and I need to preserve the loop data (contained in the 8-byte header).
I've yet to see a batch audio editing problem that sox couldn't handle, so I'm hoping someone on here would know how to use sox to accomplish this, or failing that, know of a program that can do this for me.
Thanks for the help!
*Edit- A bit of research got me the exact encoding of the PCM audio I need to edit:
"The audio tracks are 44.1 kilohertz, 16-bit stereo uncompressed unsigned PCM files in little-endian order, left channel first, with a simple eight-byte header. The first four bytes spell out “MSU1” in ASCII. This is followed by a 32-bit unsigned integer used as the loop point, measured in samples (a sample being four bytes) – if the repeat bit is set in the audio state register, this value is used to determine where to seek the audio track to."
*Edit2-I've managed to develop the needed sox command, I just have no idea how to turn it into a batch. Also, turns out the files were 16-bit signed, not unsigned, PCM.
sox -t raw -e signed -b 16 -r 44100 -c 2 -L [filename].pcm -t raw -L [filename].raw vol -7.5dB
I'm fine with either a .BAT I drag and drop files onto or a .BAT that just converts every .PCM file in the folder.
Help appreciated, because I don't even know where to start looking for this one...

Related

WAV to AIF conversion - difference between recorded AIF

In audio terms there is no difference between AIF and WAV because they're both uncompressed audio. The only difference is the byte order (endianness).
My question is, can any software tell the difference between an AIF that is recorded as such and an AIF that was recorded WAV and converted? I've looked at a hex editor and there appears to be a difference in the chunks - the recorded AIF has more empty space in the COMM and SSND chunks, it would seem.
Is there a reason for this?
Many Thanks
"...the recorded AIF has more empty space in the COMM and SSND chunks, it would seem."
That might be a problem with the specific recorder you use.
In general there is no size difference in the uncompressed PCM data. I've tested a 10-second AAC file converted into WAVE and also into AIFF, result is both formats have the PCM data at 1572864 bytes long.
Also explain "more empty space in the COMM and SSND chunks" since...
COMM only holds 10 bytes worth of metadata, but in WAV file there'll be up to 84 bytes for metadata.
SSND is 16 bytes followed by PCM data, in .wav the DATA chunk is 8 bytes followed by PCM.

Converting RAW 24bit Signed PCM to 32bit PCM raw

I am a newbie here.
I am looking to know about any tool/quick way to convert a 24bit PCM raw(headerless) file, having 3 byte PCM samples,
into a 32 bit PCM raw file which has 4 bytes per sample, with the MSByte of the 4 byte data as sign/zero extension of the 3byte sample.
Apart from the 24bit raw file, I have its corresponding WAVE file as well if it helps.
When tried in audacity, although it converted 24 bit to 32bit, it did not sign/zero extend, but it left shifted by 8, the 24 bit sample. So in effect the 24 bit sample was sitting in the left aligned 24 bits of the 32 bit , which is not what was desired.
Thanks.
I'm going to assume you meant shifted left by 8 instead of shifted right by eight.
In this case the notion of sign extension is unnecessary. Imagine you have a negative 24-bit value 0x800000. Then the left shifted version would be 0x80000000. No sign extension but it still has the correct negative sign.
In summary I think audacity is doing exactly as it should, which is to simply shift the bits up. Unless for some reason your data is unsigned which would be exceptionally unusual.
Upon more search was pointed a way to do this is using sox - on linux.
sox -t s24 --endian little input.pcm -t s32 output.pcm vol 0.00390625
It worked fine.
the vol 0.00390625 is to reduce the volume by 48dB because conversion of raw PCM sample from 24bit to 32bit, by default left shifts by 8 bit, but I want it to be down-shifted back by 8 bits which is reduction in volume by 48dB

Correct way to encode Kinect audio with lame.exe

I receive data from a Kinect v2, which is (I believe, information is hard to find) 16kHz mono audio in 32-bit floating point PCM. The data arrives in up to 4 "SubFrames", which contain 256 samples each.
When I send this data to lame.exe with -r -s 16 --bitwidth 32 -m m I get an output containing gaps (supposedly where the second channel should be). These command line switches should however take stereo and downmix it to mono.
I've also tried importing the raw data into Audacity, but I still can't figure out the correct way to get continuous audio out of it.
EDIT: I can get continuous audio when I only save the first SubFrame. The audio still doesn't sound right though.
In the end I went with Ogg Vorbis. A free format, so no problems there either. I use the following command line switches for oggenc2.exe:
oggenc2.exe --raw-format=3 --raw-chan=1 --raw-rate=16000 - --output=[filename]

a-law/raw audio data

I have spent the evening messing around with raw A-law audio input/output from the built in ALSA tools aplay and arecord, and passing them through an offline moving average filter I have written.
My question is: the audio seems to be encoded using values between 0x2A and 0xAA - a range of 128. I have been reading through this guide which is informative but doesn't really explain why and offset of 42 (0x2A) has been chosen. The file I used to examine this was a square wave exported from audacity as unsigned 8-bit 8kHz audio and examined in a hex editor.
Can anyone shed some light on how A-law is encoded in a file?
This may help;
/dev/dsp
8000 frames per second, 8 bits per frame (1 byte);
# Max volume = \xff (or \x00).
# No volume = \x80 (the middle).

Convert raw PCM stream to wavs (cli)

I need a program that I can pipe a raw PCM stream into, and will send wav files to stdout.
Since the input is a stream, I can't just add headers to it, but I can for every x seconds (For example, program reads ten seconds of the stream, and outputs a ten second long wav file, reads the next ten seconds, outputs a wav file, and so on).
Is there a program that can do this? It needs to run on Linux.
Check out sox, the Swiss Army knife of sound processing.
This is a dead simple program to write, in fact, if you can guarantee exactly the same number of bytes of PCM data in each wave file, you can just pre-create a standard wave file header for that amount of PCM data and then just cat wavehdr + chunk-of-streamdata
mplayer is quite good for this kind of tasks. It comes with two interface, mencoder and mplayer. mencoder as all the command line switch you want to transform raw pcm into various sound format.
It also come with a very long man page that explains all the options quite well.

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