MP3 to AIFF? (OCTAmed format) using a PC

[Karlos]

@scafe

AIFF is Audio Interchange File Format and is not specific to Octamed or any other package. It's an IFF format for 16-bit PCM audio originally designed by Apple.

You can decode mp3 to AIFF in all sorts of ways. Soundforge, winamp (also amigaamp and various amiga mp3 players can decode to AIFF files).

The best way to play AIFF (and other uncompressed PCM formats) streaming from disk is with play16, a no nonsesne CLI based player that supports 14-bit calibrated output without a sound card or AHI (it can use the latter also).

AIFF is generally uncompressed. Hence, the size issue is a major one. If you want CD quality stereo sound, you will need 44100x2x2 = 172.27K/s. Or to put it another way, you'll need a spare 606Mb of hard disk space for an hour's worth of music.

[Karlos]

@scafe

Well, if you are planning to burn the audio to CD and transfer to your amiga's HD then you might try exporting the aiff audio at 22050Hz rather than 44100. The reason is that unless you are using a doublescan display on the amiga, Paula won't be able to play back the audio any faster than 28kHz.

So, given that limitation, 22kHz AIFF makes sense and it doubles your storage space. Make sure you resample it with antialias filtering enabled (thats a doddle in soundforge, for instance).

Given paula's general limitations, it's unlikely you will notice much degradation in quality at 22kHz, especially if antialiased first.

You could even go for 8-bit audio, but I wouldn't bother since 14-bit calibrated playback of 16-bit audio is noticably better than 8 bit. At least to my ears :-D