software > Soundconverter

Soundconverter is a program to convert sound files from one format to another. My basic motivation for creating this program was that sox, the standard linux command-line program for doing this kind of thing, was buggy, and also seemed to be falling into disrepair. Since I could no longer get sox to work properly on my system, I decided to write a tool to replace its broken functionality. Soundconverter still uses sox behind the scenes for some conversions, but for most conversions it uses other software.

The syntax is uniform, no matter what formats you're converting between. For example, here's what you'd do to convert wav to mp3:
soundconverter input.wav output.mp3

The following formats are supported: au, wav, mp3, ogg, flac, aac

This program depends on the following debian packages:
sox vorbis-tools lame madplay transcode flac faac faad
If some of these packages are not installed, then the program will still run, but the corresponding functionality will be lost.

generic instructions for installing Soundconverter

Source code: soundconverter.tar.gz

Download the source code, and then do this:

  tar -zxvf soundconverter.tar.gz
  cd soundconverter_dist
  make install

You also need to install the dependencies listed above.

The program's man page is reproduced on this web page.

Soundconverter is not the same program as Sound Converter (two words), which is a GUI program rather than a command-line program, but otherwise does pretty much the same thing.

man page

soundconverter(1)             soundconverter 0.3             soundconverter(1)



NAME
       Soundconverter - a program to convert sound files from one format to
       another

SYNOPSIS
       soundconverter [options] [input file] [output file]

OPTIONS
       -h      Prints a brief help message and exits.

       -v      Prints the version number and exits.

       -t      Tests the program by doing a chain of conversions, covering
               every possible conversion, starting with the input file and
               ending up by writing the result to the output file.

DESCRIPTION
       Soundconverter reads the input file and converts it to the format spec-
       ified for the output file. Both formats are inferred from the extension
       of the relevant filename. The conversion is actually carried out by an
       external program, and that program's output (e.g., a progress bar) will
       be written to the console.  Sometimes a conversion cannot be done
       directly by a single program; in this situation, the file will first be
       converted to a temporary file in .wav format (typically in a 16-bit
       integer encoding), and then the .wav will be converted to the final
       format.

       There are no command-line options to control quality of lossy formats,
       encoding types for .wav files, etc; if you're getting that fancy, you
       should probably use the relevant tools directly rather than through
       soundconverter.

INSTALLATION
       Do a "make install".    This program depends on the following debian
       packages:

       sox vorbis-tools lame madplay transcode flac faac faad

       If some of these packages are not installed, then the program will
       still run, but the corresponding functionality will be lost.

       The following formats are supported:
            au, wav, mp3, ogg, flac, aac

OTHER INFORMATION
       Soundconverter's web page is at

               http://www.lightandmatter.com/soundconverter/soundconverter.html   ,

       where you can always find the latest version of the software.

AUTHOR
       Soundconverter was written by Ben Crowell, http://www.lightandmat-
       ter.com/personal/.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
       Copyright (C) 2008 by Benjamin Crowell.

       Soundconverter is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
       it under the terms of the GPL, or, optionally, Perl's license.



0.3                               2008-07-24                 soundconverter(1)