-w / stdout output: seems buggy

[sdaoden]

Hello!
It makes a difference whether i use -w or not in respect to whether the file is understood by play(1) aka sox(1), or not. If i compare the files there is a mismatch.

• this is regardless of whether the output file is seekable (aka i thought the length field is simply not updated in -w mode, which may well be true nonetheless -- i did not actually look at the header).

• it must be said that ogg123 can dump to wav in a way that play(1) works.

# faad -d -q -w -f1 orlovsky_trio.aac > /tmp/au
# # no
# play -t wav /tmp/au
play FAIL formats: can't open input file `/tmp/au': invalid chunk ID found
# # no
# faad  -d -q -w -f 1 orlovsky_trio.aac | play -t wav -

# # this works:
# ogg123 -q -d wav -f - richie_havens-freedom__woodstock_1969.ogg | play -t wav -

[sdaoden]

..please allow me to reiterate.
I do have to use an "equalizer" script to get good sound, you know.
The problem is i have input files of various sort, bit rate, channels, and sample rate.
Now, "normally" i simply do, for example, "mp4play SONG.aac"

mp4play ()
{
    ( __r_d_b_x__ y "${@}";
    eval "${__x__} faad -q -w \"${__r__}\" |
                                sox -q -t raw -r 44100 -c 2 -b 16 -e signed-integer - -t alsa" )
}

but this does not work if any of sample rate, channel, and bit rate is different.
So if i go through WAV export, the WAV header will tell sox what to do.
Yet, faad fails:

$ faad -q -w -f1 orlovsky_trio.aac > /tmp/a1.wav
#?0|kent:recs.misc$ faad -q -o /tmp/a2.wav -f1 orlovsky_trio.aac
#?0|kent:recs.misc$ play /tmp/a1.wav
play WARN alsa: can't encode 0-bit Unknown or not applicable
play FAIL formats: can't open input file `/tmp/a1.wav': invalid chunk ID found
#?2|kent:recs.misc$ play /tmp/a2.wav
play WARN alsa: can't encode 0-bit Unknown or not applicable

/tmp/a2.wav:

 File Size: 55.6M     Bit Rate: 1.41M
  Encoding: Signed PCM
  Channels: 2 @ 16-bit
Samplerate: 44100Hz
Replaygain: off
  Duration: 00:05:15.14

In:1.71% 00:00:05.39 [00:05:09.75] Out:258k  [      |      ]        Clip:0
Aborted.

Ie, it makes a difference whether i use -w or not.
Further, i now added a bypass that goes via -o, but note that that fails if the decoded file size hits the 32-bit limit (what seems to be the case).
Please call back if you want another issue for that.

Anyhow, both of these are no issues for ogg123 -q, so maybe there is something you want to fix or improve.

Thank you.

[fabiangreffrath]

Does it help if you use the -f 2 parameter? Does it help if you add -g?

[sdaoden]

$ faad -g -q -w -f1 /x/music/recs.misc/orlovsky_trio.aac > x.wav
$ play x.wav
play WARN alsa: can't encode 0-bit Unknown or not applicable
play FAIL formats: can't open input file `x.wav': invalid chunk ID found

-f2 is raw output. Can i somehow specify the desired bit rate, channel number, sample rate?

[LP314159]

I can verify that this occurs, at least with the AAC files that I have decoded.

The "-w" option writes a corrupt WAV file to stdout, while the "-o file.wav" option writes a valid WAV file.

Analysis of output files with sndfile-info (from the libsndfile package):

faad -w file.aac > file.wav
sndfile-info file.wav

File : file.wav
Length : 70369324
RIFF : 36
WAVE
fmt : 16
Format : 0x1 => WAVE_FORMAT_PCM
Channels : 2
Sample Rate : 48000
Block Align : 4
Bit Width : 16
Bytes/sec : 192000
data : 0
Have 0 marker at position 52 (0x34).

Sample Rate : 48000
Frames : 0
Channels : 2
Format : 0x00010002
Sections : 1
Seekable : TRUE
Duration : 00:00:00.000
Signal Max : 0 (-inf dB)

*Note the data=0 and duration is 0 and signal max is 0

faad -o file.wav file.aac
sndfile-info file.wav

File : file.wav
Length : 70369324
RIFF : 70369316
WAVE
fmt : 16
Format : 0x1 => WAVE_FORMAT_PCM
Channels : 2
Sample Rate : 48000
Block Align : 4
Bit Width : 16
Bytes/sec : 192000
data : 70369280
End

Sample Rate : 48000
Frames : 17592320
Channels : 2
Format : 0x00010002
Sections : 1
Seekable : TRUE
Duration : 00:06:06.507
Signal Max : 32768 (0.00 dB)

For me, it is desirable to have output to stdout as I can then pipe the output to Alsa aplay or other software.