Multi-channel wav import

[simon_lyn]

Hi all

I'm working on a Max patch that records the outputs from 3 stereo and 1 mono sources - the idea was to record a performance and mix it later in Logic Express. I discovered that although the same 'record' command is sent to each source at the same time, there are unpredictable variances (up to around 100ms) in the resulting length of the audio files. This makes lining the files up to mix an unpleasant headache...

So instead I used a Max option to record a single 7-channel wav file (and confirmed with Max forum that each has the same length and start time). Bad news now is that Logic Express cannot read it, also tried multichannel AIFF without success...

Does anyone know of a utility that will extract multichannel audio files into their mono constituents? I know I can upgrade to Logic Studio but $300 is a lot for this function! I've also looked at products like Reaper and Audacity.

Audacity will unpack a multichannel wav, but will only output mono/stereo files, so I'd have to solo individual files and export them on at a time before loading them into Logic. It just seems a bit awkward, so I'm hoping there's a cheap and efficient alternative - please let me know if you are aware of one!

Thx

Simon

[Jez86]

Just found a free program called BeSplit which should do what you require, this quote is from the example.txt file in the download:

7. Demuxing a Multichannel wave into Mono waves
this will create the files channel01.wav, channel02.wav on e:\
BeSplit -core( -input stereo.wav -prefix e:\channel -type wav -demux )

Here's the link look on the 'stable' page.

Hope this helps

Jez

[Ace-Audio.co.uk]

the link above looks to be windows only and as your running logic i take it you would like an OS X native application.

Wave editor from audio engineering is cheap and does exactly what your looking for. just open the file go to save as and choose your preferred format then select split for the channel scheme (note there is more than one split each one names the file slightly differently for more on this go to Wave Editor>Preferences>Schemes or refer to the manual). You should see within seconds a number of separate mono files one for each channel (note wave editor still recognizes that there together and opens all the files together)

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/waveeditor/

hope that does the trick, take care.

[simon_lyn]

Hey guys - thanks for taking the time to reply, I will go take a look...

Cheers

Simon

[Mixedup]

I think you can do this with Quick Time Pro as well.

[Bob Moose]

the link above looks to be windows only and as your running logic i take it you would like an OS X native application.

Check "De-interleaver" : http://scottwilson.ca/site/Software.html

I have used it sometimes. At that time, it only worked with AIFF files (not WAVE files at least). But it was a Beta version so maybe this has been fixed now.

All the best,
-j

[onesecondglance]

REAPER can handle multi-channel WAVs - the first non-beta OS X version is on the horizon (there's a release candidate in public test at the moment).

[Bob Moose]

Since March 16, Reaper for OS X is no longer a beta version