Question

7

How to convert .aif audio files to mp3?

rated 0 times [ 7] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 19071 / 2 Years ago, sat, november 12, 2022, 11:31:13

I have audio files with .aif extensions (AIFF/Amiga/Mac audio). How to play them and, more important: how to convert them to mp3 or other more common audio format?

update: trying to run a command found here, namely for i in *.aif; do sox "$i" "$i.wav"; done, and having sox already installed, i get an error like

sox FAIL formats: can't open input file 'filename': Unsupported AIFC
compression type `ima4'

exiftool provides info such as:

File Size                       : 41 MB

File Modification Date/Time     : 2013:04:23 15:54:02+02:00

File Permissions                : rw-r--r--

File Type                       : AIFC

MIME Type                       : audio/x-aiff

Format Version Time             : 1990:05:23 14:40:00

Num Channels                    : 1

Num Sample Frames               : 1257382

Sample Size                     : 0

Sample Rate                     : 16000

Compression Type                : Unknown (ima4)

for some reason sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libavcodec-unstripped-52 would not work (Unable to locate package - but Multiverse is enabled)

Answers

Only authorized users can answer the question. Please sign in first, or register a free account.

inglehare

Add To Favorites

Follow

Total Points: 330

Total Questions: 111

Total Answers: 95

Location: Sint Maarten

Member since Tue, Mar 29, 2022

2 Years ago

answered 1 Year ago atelti · Accepted Answer

Finding this solution here (also recommended in comments), for some reason sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libavcodec-unstripped-52 would not work (Unable to locate package - but Multiverse is enabled).

But in Synaptic I have seen that I had libavcodec53 installed, but not libavcodec-extra-53. Installing the later has uninstalled the former, and then the command ffmpeg -i inputfile.aif -f mp3 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192000 -ar 44100 outputfile.mp3 worked.

So,

~$ sudo apt-get install libavcodec-extra-53

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

The following extra packages will be installed:

  libavutil-extra-51 libdirac-encoder0 libopencore-amrnb0 libopencore-amrwb0

  libopenjpeg2 libvo-aacenc0 libvo-amrwbenc0 libx264-123

The following packages will be REMOVED:

  libavcodec53 libavutil51

The following NEW packages will be installed:

  libavcodec-extra-53 libavutil-extra-51 libdirac-encoder0 libopencore-amrnb0

  libopencore-amrwb0 libopenjpeg2 libvo-aacenc0 libvo-amrwbenc0 libx264-123

0 upgraded, 9 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Need to get 7,656 kB of archives.

After this, other commands and actions are now working, including those to convert to mp3, like avconv -i %f %f.mp3. To see that in Terminal, I have added to Thunar custom actions: gnome-terminal --window-with-profile=new1 -e "avconv -i %f %f.mp3". (In Gnome Terminal, create a new profile called "new1" and edit it ('Edit/Profiles/Title and Command') to 'When command exits: Hold the Terminal open'.)

Even after this, the aif files cannot be played by Totem, Parole, Xine, DeaDBeeF, Banshee or VLC; even in Audacity the sound is badly distorted, just like in Audacious. But mplayer (SMPlayer, Gnome Player, Mplayer) can play them just fine.