DSD: Playing .amb files

[racingfan360]

Does anyone know of a solution of how to convert the .amb files created by the original DSD software to a .wav file or an .mp3 file? I'm struggling to find a player that does this. DSD states it has a -w option to convert .amb files to .wav files but this doesn't seem to work on any of the windows versions of DSD AFAIK?

 

[Unitrunker2]

I think you can send the raw audio samples to std output and pipe that to a file. Load the raw 16 bit samples into a program like Audacity. Export to whatever format you like.

 

[Reconrider]

Hmm, I was able to get stuff recorded but it saved as a wav file and not an amb file. I forget what options I used but I'll look it up and post a reply

 

[Reconrider]

I think I used -Pwav somehow. Look in the DSDPlus.txt file and it will tell you what to do. Also look at the examples for single sdr and 2 sdrs, they have the recording arguments in those lines

 

[racingfan360]

Thanks Unitrunker2....I have tried Audacity before and while the raw file import function 'works' all it seems to do is take the .amb audio and turn it into sub-second burst of noise. Any idea on what settings might work for Audacity for this to work properly?

Reconrider: thanks for the reply. Unfortunately this is DSD not DSDPlus.

If the, as advertiser, -w function worked in DSD then i dont think there would be a problem. I can replay via DSD using -r but I can't convert to wav. And I have a lot of these .amb files.

 

[Reconrider]

Thanks Unitrunker2....I have tried Audacity before and while the raw file import function 'works' all it seems to do is take the .amb audio and turn it into sub-second burst of noise. Any idea on what settings might work for Audacity for this to work properly?

Reconrider: thanks for the reply. Unfortunately this is DSD not DSDPlus.

If the, as advertiser, -w function worked in DSD then i dont think there would be a problem. I can replay via DSD using -r but I can't convert to wav. And I have a lot of these .amb files.

Oh I was never able to get dsd working for me so I bought dsdplus so I never had a chance to play with anything before buying it.
if you have the money for lifetime updates, it’s 100% worth it. If you want to try a free program, you should look into sdrtrunk it’s a little funny to setup butI’m here if you want to try to and need help. It has recording on a “per tgid” where dsd records everything.

 

[racingfan360]

Thanks....yes, I've been a long time user of DSDPlus (even spent a little time exchanging info with the developer(s) as they perfected adding the filename formet to the current versions etc). Its my archive of dsd .amb files that I'd like to get after now.

 

[Unitrunker2]

The idea is to use dsd to play back the amb file as audio but send the raw audio to a file. Someone added portaudio support a while back which may have broken combined use of -r with -w.

Try '-o -' where the trailing dash means standard output. Follow that with '> xyz.raw'. Might work.

In summary ...

dsd -r file.amb -o - > file.raw

Load the resulting raw file into Audacity.

 

[racingfan360]

Thanks. I'm able to get other non-dsd .raw files working fine with Audacity, but the dsd variants all seem to import as a burst of audio (I assume compressed?).
I too have a distant memory of the -w function being broken quite early in the development of dsd. The earliest windows port of dsd I have is based on dsd 1.4 (I think). Quite frustrating as dsd will replay the .amb files fine.....I just can't seem to convert them to anything sensible.

 

[boatbod]

Not a DSD user, but I'm going to take a wild guess that .amb files contain raw codewords. If so, that means you'll need a player capable of not only reading the file format but also capable of xMBE decoding.

 

[Unitrunker2]

boatbod: you just described 'dsd -r'