14 Replies Latest reply: Nov 22, 2012 3:11 PM by _durin_ RSS

    Loopology Distortion

    JZuck Community Member

      I searched the forum but didn't really see a satisfactory answer to the question of distortion in the Loopology files. They load and play fine in Audition and I can save them in some WAV file format other than Audition Legacy and they play fine everywhere. that's pretty laborious so I tried to batch convert them in AME but that didn't work. they won't preview in Windows, they won't work in Vegas. That's very stange. Does anyone have an explanation other than the legacy file format or have a clue what settings I could use in AME to convert them to a more generic format. It's not all files just some of them. Weird!

        • 1. Re: Loopology Distortion
          SteveG(AudioMasters) Community Member

          JZuck wrote:

           

          I searched the forum but didn't really see a satisfactory answer to the question of distortion in the Loopology files. They load and play fine in Audition and I can save them in some WAV file format other than Audition Legacy and they play fine everywhere. that's pretty laborious so I tried to batch convert them in AME but that didn't work. they won't preview in Windows, they won't work in Vegas. That's very stange. Does anyone have an explanation other than the legacy file format or have a clue what settings I could use in AME to convert them to a more generic format. It's not all files just some of them. Weird!

          The loopology files that you can download now (not the original versions) are wav files, and they aren't distorted. The wave file format is uncompressed, universal, and defined initially by M$ - it's not any form of 'legacy' format at all. If you try to save files in any other format that's compressed, then all bets are off - and that has nothing to do with the original files.

           

          And what on earth is AME? A Google search doesn't reveal audio software.

          • 2. Re: Loopology Distortion
            Bob Howes Community Member

            Out of curiousity, Steve, what is the original bit depth on the downloadable Loopology files?  For me they open at 32 bit FP but I'm not sure if that's because of my own local defaults.

             

            If they ARE 32 bit files, that could explain why some less professional software can't handle them.

            • 3. Re: Loopology Distortion
              SteveG(AudioMasters) Community Member

              I checked the properties of one straight from the unzip - yes they are 32-bit FP files; 0.24 float type 3 which is the current standard. And yes, if people try to open them with Mickey Mouse software, they might have some trouble!

              • 4. Re: Loopology Distortion
                JZuck Community Member

                Of course, in this case the Mickey Mouse software is Sony Vegas (which isn't really Mickey Mouse) and Windows media player. When I bring them into Audition, it says they are 16.8 floating point which shows up in the "Save As" dialog as a "legacy audition format." If go to "Save As..." in Audition and save it as 32bit float, IEEE format (all of these are uncompressed btw), it creates a WAV file that is easily played both in Vegas and Windows media player (windows preview).

                 

                Any clues? I'm no audio genius, just a video guy, but it seems as though the issue is a little more complex than Mickey Mouse software.

                 

                JZ

                • 5. Re: Loopology Distortion
                  JZuck Community Member

                  There are several "uncompressed" WAV file formats, according to the "Save As" dialog in Audition. If I use IEEE, 32bit float, the resulting WAV files play just fine in Windows and Vegas. It's that weird 16.8 format that seems to be the issue.

                   

                  AME - Adobe Media Encoder (sorry) Once I found a format that worked accross the board, I was attempting a batch conversion but, of course, the audio settings in AME are not granular enough to fix the issue.

                   

                  Jonathan

                  • 6. Re: Loopology Distortion
                    SteveG(AudioMasters) Community Member

                    JZuck wrote:

                     

                    There are several "uncompressed" WAV file formats, according to the "Save As" dialog in Audition. If I use IEEE, 32bit float, the resulting WAV files play just fine in Windows and Vegas. It's that weird 16.8 format that seems to be the issue.

                    Ah, well I can explain about that. This was the original floating point format that Syntrillium (originators of Cool Edit, from which Audition grew) chose to use before there was any consensus about a standard for this - which there now is, and Audition now uses. It's only really there for legacy purposes.

                     

                    As for Mickey Mouse software - well personally I put Windows Media Player in that category, but not Vegas.

                     

                    As for your original question - well, Audition can save files in quite a lot of formats, and can certainly batch-convert anything it can open into them. What particularly had you got in mind?

                    • 7. Re: Loopology Distortion
                      JZuck Community Member

                      Well, actually it seems as though the loopology content IS in that legacy format and it's THAT format that other software seems unable to read. There's a way to do batch conversions in Audition? I'm a newbie. I usually use AME for batch stuff but it's not sophisticated enough with audio for this task. I would like to just convert all of these WAV files to IEEE standard format so I can use them everywhere, preview them in windows, etc.

                      • 8. Re: Loopology Distortion
                        ryclark Community Member

                        Under the Edit menu click on Batch Process. In the panel that opens either drag files from the Files panel or open them from the Add Files icon. You can use standard Windows shortcuts for selecting multiple files. Once you have files listed in the Batch Prcess panel click on Export Settings at the bottom left to select the format you wish to convert to then Run.

                        • 9. Re: Loopology Distortion
                          JZuck Community Member

                          Thanks!

                          • 10. Re: Loopology Distortion
                            SteveG(AudioMasters) Community Member

                            JZuck wrote:

                             

                            Well, actually it seems as though the loopology content IS in that legacy format and it's THAT format that other software seems unable to read.

                            I just checked again the one I downloaded this morning carefully in Audition 1.5 (which reads the file properties directly and tells you what they are before you've opened it) - and it definitively isn't.

                            • 11. Re: Loopology Distortion
                              _durin_ Employee Hosts

                              If these files are from the older Loopology DVDs that shipped with Audition, they may be in .CEL format which was mp3 compression with a bit of added information in the header.  Currently, this added information is interpreted as audio data which ends up adding a burst of noise to the beginning of the waveform.  It wouldn't affect the remaining audio, but if this is what you're hearing, a favorite action could be applied in Batch Process to strip this away and re-encode to WAV.

                               

                              If you downloaded the Loopology files directly from the website and they're already in WAV format, please let me know a few examples of ones you've found with distortion and I'll investigate.

                               

                              Thanks

                              • 12. Re: Loopology Distortion
                                SteveG(AudioMasters) Community Member

                                The only other thing I'm wondering is about the original files before they were .cel formatted. These were originally created in Cool Edit when it was using what's now the 'legacy' format, and I'm presuming that they were all converted properly...

                                 

                                Of course, the person who created them all originally is still very much an Adobe employee, so if there really is anything strange happening, perhaps somebody should ask him what, if anything, he knows about it?

                                 

                                Oh, and have a good turkey day, Durin!

                                • 13. Re: Loopology Distortion
                                  JZuck Community Member

                                  They're WAV files. Anything in the slap bass directory under Urban

                                  • 14. Re: Loopology Distortion
                                    _durin_ Employee Hosts

                                    Thanks, Steve. Just finished round two and am taking a minute before the pies come out.