Audio file conversion

Question

I'm trying to convert from mp3 to alaw, but sox does not seem to help.

sox FAIL formats: no handler for file extension `alaw'

Am I missing something? Any suggestions?

Answer 1

file extension for alaw should be .al

Have a look at http://sox.sourceforge.net/soxformat.html

"ul indicates 'μ-law' (8-bit), al indicates 'A-law' (8-bit)"

Answer 2

SoX doesn't recognise the file extension .alaw.

It does support A-law encoded files though. You just need to double check what format your audio is actually in.

If it's just raw (ie no header) audio, this is a simple A-law file. Change the extension to either .al or .la depending on which way round your bits are (.la is inverse bit order), then try again.

If your audio was in a different "container format" (ie .au, .gsrt, .maud, .prc or .voc for example) then the file extension should already be one of these, and I'm not sure why it wouldn't be! If you know the audio is definitely one of these then try changing to the appropriate extension and give that a shot.

Check the SoX manual for more info :)