[PD-dev] CAF file support?

[Dan Wilcox]

Howdy all,

I am working on the 3rd iteration of a long term project we use for sound spatialization at ZKM. The current sound server was built using Pd and runs internally using libpd.

We have many older projects which use CAF (Core Audio File) audio files (.caf or .caff) and I would need to be able to read them with Pd. I could find or make an external just for this file format, but I was thinking it could be generally useful to have this supported by [soundfiler], et al directly.

CAF specification: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/MusicAudio/Reference/CAFSpec/CAF_spec/CAF_spec.html <https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/MusicAudio/Reference/CAFSpec/CAF_spec/CAF_spec.html>

The format is basically a container that takes different data formats, one being LPCM as in WAV & AIFF. We could post an error and ignore any compressed files. As the file structure is similar to WAV & AIFF, it seems like it wouldn't be too much work to add uncompressed CAF support to Pd and would work conceptually in the same manner.

CAF files offer a couple of advantages:

* 64-bit offsets for nigh-unrestricted durations (so file sizes > 4 GB)
* recording could be faster as it allows for appending data
* open format that is supported outside of macOS/iOS

--------
Dan Wilcox
@danomatika <http://twitter.com/danomatika>
danomatika.com <http://danomatika.com/>
robotcowboy.com <http://robotcowboy.com/>



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