22 Apr
2004
22 Apr
'04
6:11 a.m.
Hi there.
I have a Boss BR-532 digital multitrack, which saves my songs onto SmartMedia
cards. I can then get these files onto my PC using a USB card reader. So far
so good.
Two questions:
1) Probably a long shot, but does anyone have any clue as to how I might
convert the files from the BR-532's internal format to WAV or whatever? I can
do this using a Windows GUI program supplied by Boss (runs fine under wine),
but the interface is rather fiddly and limited. Any chance I might be able to
do this eg. with some kind of command line / scriptable tool? Cursory
Googling hasn't revealed a lot about the file formats to me - they're
described as 'MT2', 'LV1', and 'LV2' (in decreasing order of sound
quality).
I usually use LV2 (for that much sought after lo-fi sound...).
2) Once I've got my WAV files, can I just drag them into Audacity / Ardour etc
and assume they'll stay synced? Or is some kind of additional syncing used to
keep tracks aligned?
Thanks for any help.
22 Apr
22 Apr
6:34 a.m.
Hi Joe,
On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 11:04:40 +0100
Joe Button <linux-audio-user(a)joebutton.co.uk> wrote:
I have a Boss BR-532 digital multitrack, which saves
my songs onto
SmartMedia cards. I can then get these files onto my PC using a USB
card reader. So far so good.
1) Probably a long shot, but does anyone have any clue
as to how I
might convert the files from the BR-532's internal format to WAV or
whatever? I can do this using a Windows GUI program supplied by Boss
(runs fine under wine), but the interface is rather fiddly and
limited. Any chance I might be able to do this eg. with some kind of
command line / scriptable tool? Cursory Googling hasn't revealed a lot
about the file formats to me - they're described as 'MT2', 'LV1', and
'LV2' (in decreasing order of sound quality). I usually use LV2 (for
that much sought after lo-fi sound...).
I own a Boss-BR8 (which is AFAIK kinda big brother of the BR-532 and
works with ZIP-disks). I can mount the disks as MSDOS disks. The
soundfiles are stored on them in the format you mentioned. So you can
copy the files to your local disk, which makes the Doze-GUI-util work a
bit faster. But still, no commandline-automation. If you find one,
please let me know :-)
2) Once I've got my WAV files, can I just drag
them into Audacity /
Ardour etc and assume they'll stay synced? Or is some kind of
additional syncing used to keep tracks aligned?
No syncing needed. I recently had to get 10 songs from the BR-8 to a CD
to make use of them as guide tracks in a studio. You simply can export
them and ajdust them to zero, et voilá!
HTH,
t.
--
Thorsten Mika mailto: tmika(a)t-online.de
Hamm / Germany TM5173-RIPE
Public Key ID: 41338C37 -- http://www.keyserver.net
6:41 a.m.
On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 11:04:40 +0100
Joe Button <linux-audio-user(a)joebutton.co.uk> wrote:
Hi there.
I have a Boss BR-532 digital multitrack, which saves my songs onto SmartMedia
cards. I can then get these files onto my PC using a USB card reader. So far
so good.
Two questions:
1) Probably a long shot, but does anyone have any clue as to how I might
convert the files from the BR-532's internal format to WAV or whatever? I can
do this using a Windows GUI program supplied by Boss (runs fine under wine),
but the interface is rather fiddly and limited. Any chance I might be able to
do this eg. with some kind of command line / scriptable tool? Cursory
Googling hasn't revealed a lot about the file formats to me - they're
described as 'MT2', 'LV1', and 'LV2' (in decreasing order of
sound quality).
I usually use LV2 (for that much sought after lo-fi sound...).
I'm the author of libsndfile. If you can make available a small example file
(100kbytes or less) I'll be willing to have a look. It might also be useful
to suply the same file decoded to WAV just for comparison.
The best way to make these files available is to put them on a web or ftp
server and send me a link.
Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo nospam(a)mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because
that would also stop you from doing clever things." -- Doug Gwyn
8:26 a.m.
On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 08:33:55PM +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
My Roland VS880 uses MT1 and MT2, which are proprietary lossy codecs by Roland (and
therefore used by BOSS too, I guess). I don't think they have been figured out yet.
cheers
Christian Henz
On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 11:04:40 +0100
Joe Button <linux-audio-user(a)joebutton.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
do this eg.
with some kind of command line / scriptable tool? Cursory
Googling hasn't revealed a lot about the file formats to me - they're
described as 'MT2', 'LV1', and 'LV2' (in decreasing order of
sound quality).
I usually use LV2 (for that much sought after lo-fi sound...).
I'm the author of libsndfile. If you can make available a small example file
(100kbytes or less) I'll be willing to have a look. It might also be useful
to suply the same file decoded to WAV just for comparison.
11:21 a.m.
What a tantalising thread ...
On Thursday 22 April 2004 1:18 pm, Christian Henz wrote:
My Roland VS880 uses MT1 and MT2, which are
proprietary lossy codecs by
Roland
I have an album that was recorded on a pair of VS1680s chained together (it
seemed like a good idea at the time), which took so long that we never got as
far as a final mix. I've kind of resigned myself to the idea that I'll never
do this under Linux. I now have access, potentially, to a VS1880, but I don't
imagine it is possible to directly read the data via a scsi link or off the
CDs directly. I know it might be technically possible to stripe 8 tracks at a
time via a specialised card & some VST plug-in into Logic, but even that
could turn out to be a complete nightmare.
The chances are we will have to find a way to mix it on a single VS1880, c'est
la vie. It's great to know that there are others looking at these kind of
problems, even if there is no magic solution for mine.
Thanks for that tidbit :-)
tim hall
9:57 a.m.
On Thursday 22 April 2004 11:33, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 11:04:40 +0100
Joe Button <linux-audio-user(a)joebutton.co.uk> wrote:
> 1) Probably a long shot, but does anyone have any
clue as to how I might
> convert the files from the BR-532's internal format to WAV or whatever?
...
> Cursory Googling hasn't revealed a lot about
the file formats to me -
> they're described as 'MT2', 'LV1', and 'LV2' (in
decreasing order of
> sound quality).
I'm the author of libsndfile. If you can make
available a small example
file (100kbytes or less) I'll be willing to have a look. It might also be
useful to suply the same file decoded to WAV just for comparison.
If you can reverse-engineer it from the files I'll be extremely grateful and
impressed, but frankly a bit surprised. What's on the SM cards looks pretty
opaque. I think this sort of thing is why RMS started the free software
movement in the first place.
If you're up for having a look, I've recorded a short (a few seconds) jazzy
noodle onto a virgin card and uploaded the card's contents wholesale to
http://joebutton.co.uk/br532card.tgz. Sorry it's rather bigger than you wanted
- I just recorded a very short snippet but it turned out to be bigger than
I'd hoped (578k).
There are three tracks:
Track 1: Me hitting a mug with a teaspoon (the mug's blue and says 'Elvis
lives' on it if you're interested) - 6.68 seconds
Track 2: Acoustic rhythm guitar - 8.26 seconds
Track 3: Acoustic jazz guitar noodling - 7.85 seconds
Unfortunately the tracks don't show up as separate files on the card data.
Presumably they're buried in take_dat.br0. I've included the tracks as wavs
along with the raw card data.
The Windows prog that converts from the BR532 format to wavs is here, if it's
any help:
http://www.roland.co.uk/SUPPORT/UPDATES/BR532wav.ZIP
If there's anything else you'd like let me know, although I'm going away for a
week or so today so it'll be a while before I can do much else. Maybe
Thorsten will be able to help (he seems like a helpful kind of guy).
As I said, if you can figure this stuff out I'll be enormously grateful, but
if not don't sweat it.
Ta,
Joe x
7709
days inactive
7709
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
5 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
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Christian Henz -
Erik de Castro Lopo -
Joe Button -
tim hall -
tmika＠t-online.de