[NBLUG/talk] sox ulaw to mp3

[Walter Hansen]

> Hi Walter,
>
> ulaw is different enough that I'm not surprised some apps don't
> understand it. You will probably need to do a sample rate conversion
> to something more typical as an intermediate step - also you will get
> the proper resolution since ulaw is compressed and you don't want it
> to be treated as raw even if you get the sample rate to match.
>
> Cheerful regards,
>
> Bob

I think I just did it. The problem was that it was retaining the 4bit
sampling rate (not sure if that's the correct term). I managed to find
someone else who had run into this on google. His solution was to write it
as a .cdr file as an itermediate step and then convert the .cdr back to
.wav. At that point it lost the 4bit sampling and went to a more normal
16bit sampling. I invoked lame to convert it to mp3 and volia they sound
great. I really should experiment with converting directly from .cdr to
.mp3 in sox. That may work just as well and eliminate one conversion/step.

Using -V in sox was a godsend. I'm not sure why I didn't think to do that.
It then tells you exactly what it's doing.