Ubuntu – How to convert .aif audio files to mp3

aifconvertsoundsox

I have audio files with .aif extensions (AIFF/Amiga/Mac audio). How to play them and, more important: how to convert them to mp3 or other more common audio format?

update: trying to run a command found here, namely for i in *.aif; do sox "$i" "$i.wav"; done, and having sox already installed, i get an error like

sox FAIL formats: can't open input file 'filename': Unsupported AIFC
compression type `ima4'

exiftool provides info such as:

File Size                       : 41 MB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2013:04:23 15:54:02+02:00
File Permissions                : rw-r--r--
File Type                       : AIFC
MIME Type                       : audio/x-aiff
Format Version Time             : 1990:05:23 14:40:00
Num Channels                    : 1
Num Sample Frames               : 1257382
Sample Size                     : 0
Sample Rate                     : 16000
Compression Type                : Unknown (ima4)

for some reason sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libavcodec-unstripped-52 would not work (Unable to locate package – but Multiverse is enabled)

Best Answer

Following Toon's Unix Recipes, for example (and the above examples):

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
ffmpeg -i track1.aiff -f mp3 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192000 -ar 44100 track1.mp3

(Older versions of Ubuntu can use avconv instead of ffmpeg.)

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to convert wav to ogg and mp3 using VBR

For MP3, I strongly suggest using Lame , considered by many (including me) THE best MP3 encoder, specially for VBR.

sudo apt-get install lame

And to encode:

lame -V 5 file.wav file.mp3

This will create a high-quality MP3 VBR file around ~130kbps, which is great for casual listening. Use -V 3 for average bitrates around ~200kbps

If you want to create id3v1 and id3v2 tags at the same time, you can use:

lame -V 5 --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ignore-tag-errors --ta artist --tl album --tt title --tn track --ty year --tg genre --tc comment file.wav file.mp3

For OGG, the most traditional encoder is Vorbis

sudo apt-get install vorbis-tools

And to encode:

oggenc -q 3 -o file.ogg file.wav

Ogg is VBR by default. -q 3 stands for default quality, you may change 3 from -1 to 10, or omit the option. Also, output file is optional. If you omit -o file.ogg it will automatically create a file with same name as input and .ogg extension. It also supports multiple input files (you can encode several at once, for example, using *.wav)

And for tagging:

oggenc -a artist -t title -l album -G genre -c comment -o file.ogg file.wav

Last but not least, since you seem to be very interested in encoding, an amazing forum for audio technical details and awesome source of knowledge is HydrogenAudio

And, for GUI, you said it yourself: soundconverter is a great choice. It does have VBR for MP3 (for OGG, its the format's default, so don't worry).

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Ubuntu – How to convert audio from MP4 or FLV video files to mp3

You can do the same in 12.04 by using several software.

Using WinFF

Install winff and libavcodec-extra first

 sudo apt-get install winff libavcodec-extra

Open Winff from dash
Then in Winff window, do these
1. Add file
2. Select what catagory to convert (select Audio)
3. Select Audio file format (mp3)
4. Type the output folder for converted file
1. Then click the Convert button. You can also click Options button to file tune the audio format and other options.

Using VLC

Install VLC and "libavcodec-extra" package first
```
sudo apt-get install vlc libavcodec-extra
```
Open VLC from dash by pressing Super key and typing "VLC" there
Then from top panel menu, Select Media → Convert/Save.
Then Add file to convert in the new window. Then click Convert button.
In the new window, Select the directory for output file, select the conversion profile (Audio mp3) and click Start button.

Using command line

First install the tools

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libavcodec-extra libav-tools

If you are using

Use this simple command to extract the audio file
```
avconv -i /input-file-name-with-path output-filename.mp3
```
For example to convert the "How fast.ogg" video file into how-fast.mp3 use this command:
```
avconv -i /usr/share/example-content/Ubuntu_Free_Culture_Showcase/How\ fast.ogg how-fast.mp3
```
See the manual page for more options and information.

To Just extract audio

Check these answer