WAV2WAV ?

[Symoon]

Hi !

We all know Euphoric's WAV "hardware tape" are at 4800hz rate.
We have found that Windows is unable to play back correctly such audio files, so that makes them impossible to load on an Oric. That's why Fabrice put a 11khz option in TAP2WAV.

So far, the solution to load an 4800hz tape on a real Oric was to play it with Euphoric's excellent hardware tape. I tried it myself a while ago and it worked fine. But I just found it doesn't work when I run Euphoric with Windows XP. On XP computers, it's getting harder to have a real DOS running with audio drivers.

So my question is: wouldn't it be cool to have a new tool, converting 4800hz wavs to 9600hz or 11khz wavs ? (not sure I'd be able to achieve this myself without spending 3 months on it

Cheers
Simon

[Euphoric]

Hello Simon, I understand that if you ask for such a tool, it's because you must have a lot of hardware tapes than cannot be converted to .tap images...
But, before I write such a converter (not very difficult), have you tried one of the numerous wave tools available for windows ? (I seems to me that even windows' recorder can do this speed conversion)

Cheers,

Fabrice

[Symoon]

Hi Fabrice,

Well, here are my own statistics: on the 200 tapes I transfered, 17 are impossible to convert to TAP, and I'm working on 20 other transfers, among them 2 may end as hardware tapes.
So it's something like 8,7%
Of course it's not a daily need, but I wanted to play again Le Fer d'Amnukor on a real Oric and found that the only solution was to get an old PC or a tape loader.

I did try resampling a 4800Hz version to 11khz with Cool Edit, but the resampled signal couldn't be loaded by the Oric. And of course, I had previously checked that the Oric managed to load 11khz files produced by tap2wav. It may be worth trying other audio software before anyone starts working on a tool (not sure which software and when I am able to test this again though).
I'm saying "before anyone starts working" because you're not alone on Earth Fabrice, and that would be cool to see other people helping us, wouldn't it

And of course, if someone managed to load a program on a real Oric by playing a hardware tape with Euphoric under XP, please let us know...

Cheers
Simon

[Symoon]

Oh BTW I'm also working on Loritel, trying to understant the protection and very strange loading process.
I wanted to try loading it on a real Oric and Euphoric at the same time, no success either.

More about Loritel once I have understood what happened with it - maybe in 2007 !

Cheers
Simon

[Euphoric]

Hello again, Simon, could you please try and tell us if the very basic speed conversion done by Windows' recorder produces a 11 kHz file that you can load on the real Oric ? Maybe Cool Edit does a too much sophisticated job on this conversion ?

Cheers,

Fabrice

[Symoon]

Hi Fabrice,

Ok I will try some day, the problem is that my PCs and my Orics are not at the same place, and when I say "not at the same place", I mean they're 130km away from each other. I have absolutely no room in Paris for a TV and Orics.
I only go back home visit my parents (and my Orics with my PC laptop a few times a year...
So I can't tell when is the next time now !

Cheers
Simon

[Symoon]

Fabrice:
1- I have been able to test the Windows tape player
2- you're a genius

It works indeed.
So, under XP, to load a Euphoric Hardware Tape (WAV file at 4800hz) on a real Oric, just load the file in the Windows tape player, then save it, but before saving it, on the saving prompt, click on the "modify" button.
Then select 11khz, 8 bits mono.
Save.
Use this file to load on a real Oric.
It works !

I was so sure that Cool Edit would do the job... Too sophisticated maybe

Bye-bye, WAV2WAV

Simon

[Euphoric]

on the saving prompt, click on the "modify" button.

Can you read "modify" on this button ?
On my XP system, the button is nearly completely masked on the right, I can only see "Mo" on it

[Symoon]

Actually, I read "modifier" (complete word), but as this is an international forum, I wanted to keep things in English and assumed that was "modify" in English
Were's the topic about XP bugged programs ?

[carlsson]

I was so sure that Cool Edit would do the job... Too sophisticated maybe

Are you sure you got 8-bit mono from Cool Edit? What about signed or unsigned samples? These four (4) properties: sample frequency, bit depth, signedness and mono/stereo seem to make a lot of difference when converting audio tapes to a digital/emulator format, no matter which platform it is for.

[Symoon]

Are you sure you got 8-bit mono from Cool Edit?

Yes, absolutely sure - I've been using Cool Edit for more than 10 years now, and have transfered hundreds of Oric programs with it

What about signed or unsigned samples?

This I didn't check...
I might try again some day with Cool Edit, but anyway we now know that a program that is on every "Windowed" computer does the job, so that's fine, isn't it
(until MS removes it, little by little they have remove so many interesting small utilites...)

Simon

[Symoon]

Just to close the subject:
many people have sound problems with Euphoric under XP. One of the solutions to this problem is to run Euphoric with VDMSound.

When I tried loading a game from Euphoric's hardware tape on XP to a real Oric, I forgot this. As I couldn't hear the sound, I didn't think about it, but the problems I encountered to load the program were probably the same than many XP users encountered.

So maybe using VDMSound would have solved my problem...

Cheers
Simon