Props for SoundConverter

Free converter called "Any Audio Converter".

http://www.any-audio-converter.com/

Simple interface, has presets for some devices. Allows to create list of files and convert them as batch.

For Windows only.

Those using SOX with their sound files really don't have to jump through a lot of these conversion steps. As the Sourceforge entry for SOX explains "SoX is the Swiss Army Knife of sound processing utilities. It can convert audio files to other popular audio file types and also apply sound effects and filters during the conversion."

Many of the files I have and are using in my units have different recording rates, are stereo and a host of other differences from the oft-repeated mantra of "15 kHz, Mono, 44K." My 885 can use stereo, the 800 series was actually designed this way with dual speakers but the 255 and 200 are both mono. I load the same files, with the same alert sounds to all 3 with no problems. So, other than converting from MP3 to WAV, you don't really need to do other conversions.

My suggestion is to try it before you convert your files to anything other than WAV.

Agree, Box Car, but SOX is old fashion command line utility. For people, who used this type of interface this is not a problem, but for many people it's "too hard". I myself know many people, who will not use anything without graphical point-and-click interface. That's why it may be good idea to give them this type of programs as well.

You may have missed my point. I don't do conversions and I don't touch the command line interface. I just take the wav files in whatever format they are, place them in the proper folder and then run POI Loader using SOX 14.0.1. The procedural call used within POI Loader to invoke SOX is all that's needed. SOX handles the needed conversions from whatever rate or audio format is in the original and produces the proper format in all my units.

I see your point, but think about it this way: some people will take jingle in format different than wav and want it to be played on GPS. Or some have older model that can use mp3 format. For this people more universal and point-and-click converter is better suited. If you just use standard wav file than SOX will do job without user input. But if you want this wav converted to mp3 before transferring them to GPS than it will not be enough.

For conversion from MP3 to WAV I use Audacity which has all the bells and whistles needed to perform almost any format conversion. With Audacity you can change the speed, trim files. extract segments, change the timbre and virtually anything else you would accomplish in a sound studio. But that's the elephant in your example when the original post was about converting from MP3 to WAV for a specific use, a Garmin GPSr and stating it had to be in this particular format. Box Car's response was SoX 14.0.1, as called by POI Loader doesn't care if it is 18K or 12K or 15K and mono, it will take a WAV file and convert it to the format needed within a GPI file. End of discussion.

Good manners are not something you learn yet? If you don't want to discuss this topic then don't. And so far only person that can close discussion is admin/moderator, not you.

Opening post was about wav files and for those SOX works fine. But main title was about converting sound formats. And about this are my posts. I own GPS that is using mp3 files, which are way smaller than wav-s. And there are other users that will have this preferences. So we are talking about options for those people, instead of opening separate topic about converting to mp3 or any other format, not necessarily for GPS use.

I think we have gotten at cross purposes here when it might be an opportunity to detail some basic facts of operation.

When RobertFort opened this thread, I think his purpose was to let others know that a piece of software called SoundConverter satisfied his need to convert some .wav files to 16-bit mono .wav files. His computer is a Mac, but he noted that SoundConverter had a PC version. My understanding (and I hope someone will verify this) is that, on a Mac, POI Loader does not require the use of sox.exe. I admit that I do not know whether the Mac version of POI Loader expects .wav files to have certain basic characteristics like " 16-bit mono" similar to the PC "15 kHz, Mono, 44K."

Based on his recommendation, I am going to add SoundConverter to A Glossary of Terms and Links because we do not pay enough attention of the needs of Mac users.

Next in the thread, grzesja posted that "Any Audio Converter" was his choice for doing conversions.

Then, BoxCar noted that - other than a possible conversion from .mp3 to .wav - PC users needed only POI Loader using SOX 14.0.1 to create sound alerts.

I note that there is a tool called MediaIO (to convert one format to another, say .mp3 to .wav) http://media.io/ which has a number of proponents. It just converts from one format to another without ever asking about internal characteristics of the input and output formats. This tool has seemed to work for many of our members.

A_User offered Audacity as his tool of choice when one wants to change the internal characteristics of almost any sound file. I have used Audacity for years and love it. As such, I fire it up whenever I want to create .wav files.

So, I would like to steer this thread into finding out whether or not .wav files need to have any specific characteristics. I have never had sox.exe reject any I have sent it. Have I just been lucky?

Wav files must meet one requirement: they must be recorded with quality, that makes them understandable whey played.
Wav format you can meet on CD audio discs. This is high quality sound, holds 44100 samples of 16 bit per channel (so *2 for stereo) per second. Usually you get file of approximately 10MB for every minute of recording.

Of course, you don't need this quality for GPS. So called radio quality (about 8000 samples of 8bit per second, one channel, but this can vary) can give file of 0.5MB per minute of recording. And sound is comparable to one you get from FM radio station.

I don't know with what parameters SOX is called by PIOLoader, but probably something around audio quality. You just have to remember, that even if you can downsize good quality wav file to - still perfectly usable - lower quality, it is not possible to improve poor quality file by re-sampling it to higher quality. It just make bigger file with still terrible sound.

I guess you just have proper files, so SOX doesn't have problem with conversion. It will probably reject (or not convert. I don't know if there will be any error message) only files, that have damaged structure. Everything else will go through.

@grzesja, thanks for those comments.

On reason I have for gathering information is that Garmin.com and POI Loader are silent on .wav files.

There is a special site that Garmin maintains (http://iqc.garmin.com/eCustomer/KODSelfService/) for knowledge base purposes and it has only one hit on "wav".

Note that it says:

This offers no hope for units that do not have a .mp3 player built in.

However, as I understand it, someone discovered that POI Loader (current and previous versions) had a hidden feature that would accept .wav files and build the sound alert into the .gpi file it creates (if one used a specific version of sox.exe (SOX 14.0.1).

I suspect this "discovery" comes from the "GPI Creator" program which is part of Garmin's "Content Toolkit" for software developers (http://developer.garmin.com/web-device/content-toolkit/). One of the feature points for this software is "Multimedia support for JPEG images, WAV and MP3 audio files". I suspect this software was offered so commercial firms could develop and sell audio tour guides for the nuvi's of that day that didn't have a MP3 player. There are a few of these tour guides for sale, but I don't think the third party development effort Garmin hoped for ever really took off.

Garmin should acknowledge the .WAV support in their POI Loader help file, but they don't.

Problem with wav files is with their size. CD quality cost appr. 10MB per minute. Everything less has significant drop in quality. That's why they used mp3 format. Good quality with about 5-10 times smaller files. But there is a catch: wav format is free when to implement mp3 format player in GPS they have to buy license. That's why they dropped it some time ago.
Of course there are other free formats they can use in GPS for a player, but they are not as popular as mp3. So you can imagine problems for customers with converting files from format to format.

About POI files and wav support. I never used wav files, as my GPS plays mp3, for POI sound as well. But even if you use mp3 file it is being combined into final gpi file. It just doesn't need external converter. I think SOX is used to standardize bitrate for wav file, before it will be combined into gpi file. So it is only converting source wav to bitrate that was chosen by Garmin as standard for gpi file. It's hard to tell without knowing what parameters POILoader is sending to SOX.
What format sound has inside gpi file I don't know. It may be a wav or proprietary format from Garmin.