DouglasWW
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Q: Compressor output: WAV or Broadcast WAV?

I recently discovered iPods, iPads, etc. seem to have difficulties properly playing Broadcast WAV files. Individually, they play fine, but in playlists all kinds of bizarre behavior crops up. For the moment I used Compressor to batch convert a bunch of files to AIF files and all the problems disappeared. 

 

I've used Digital Performer for years and about a year ago started saving all my audio files as broadcast wav files; which is now Performer's default. (All our files are uncompressed. For various technical reasons, we must use uncompressed files.) When playing our files on iDevices, we started having all kinds of problems, which I eventually tracked down to the Broadcast WAV's. As mentioned, by converting these to AIF's the problems vanished.

 

My question is this: Does anyone know for certain what kind of WAV format Compressor converts to?  I would like to batch convert all our existing Broadcast WAV files into "ordinary" plain WAV files. (In other words, the metadata peculiar to the broadcast format would stripped out. I suspect the extra data chunks are causing confusion in the iDevice players.)

 

Yes, I could simply export everything as AIF's...that would take care of the iDevice issues, but we need to have our files playable on many other kinds of platforms as well. Standard WAV file are by far, the most universally recognized, cross platform format, so we'd like to stick with them.

 

I don't have the necessary tools to examine a WAV file exported by Compressor, so I don't know for sure if they're "plain" WAV files or not.

 

Thanks for any feedback.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on May 20, 2015 8:34 AM

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DouglasWW

Q: Compressor output: WAV or Broadcast WAV?

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  • by BenB,Helpful

    BenB BenB May 27, 2015 4:24 PM in response to DouglasWW
    Level 6 (10,041 points)
    Audio
    May 27, 2015 4:24 PM in response to DouglasWW

    Actually, for iOS devices like you mention, you want to compress to the "iTunes Plus" format.  In the Finder, right-click an audio clip, select "Encode Selected Audio Files".  Then in that window from the menu select "iTunes Plus".  It'll play on any iOS device.  Our studio uses this daily, audio quality is great.

     

    Or in Compressor just use the AAC preset, which gives you a very compatible MPEG-4 audio file, or better yet just make a Droplet out of it.  You can also use the m4a:acc preset to bounce out to from inside Logic Pro X.

     

    In Compressor 4.2.1, go to the File menu, to "New iTunes Store Package" is another option, but may be overkill.

     

    The WAV in Compressor is plain WAV, not BWAV.  iOS devices don't use WAV by default, they like the .m4a (AAC, not Apple Lossless) files better.

  • by DouglasWW,

    DouglasWW DouglasWW May 28, 2015 7:55 AM in response to BenB
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 28, 2015 7:55 AM in response to BenB

    Thank you. The fact Compressor uses plain WAV, not Broadcast WAV is what I needed to know.

     

    As I mentioned in my original post, we cannot use any compressed audio whatsoever. When importing to iTunes (for use on iOS devices) we always check the file is imported as-is, with no compression. (This can be verified by checking the bit rate.) The reason is this:  On two channel devices like an iPod, our audio is on the right channel only (i.e., in monaural). The left channel contains proprietary data information to run shows, similar to SMPTE in concept. If the audio is compressed, our data track is corrupted and rendered useless.

     

    We have chosen to use uncompressed WAV files because the format is essentially supported cross platform by everyone and everything. We've successfully used uncompressed WAV files in the past on iOS devices. However, during this last year, we've been exporting WAV files directly from Digital Performer, which by default uses Broadcast WAV files. That's when our iOS devices started acting up.

     

    As mentioned, by converting all the BWAV files to AIF's, the problems disappeared. I'm now hoping by running all our BWAV files through Compressor and converting to WAV, our iOS devices will be happy. Like I said, we know "ordinary" WAV work just fine.

     

    Thanks!