Opening Ableton's aifs in any other program

[nicktc]

Hi

I have recently downloaded the excellent Mad Beetz (KJ Sawka) live pack.

I would like to be able to open the aif files in another program (ANY other program)... I have tried a number of editors/players and file converters but non can read the files.

Anyone know a work around??

N

[8O]

Strange... the aif files that I generate in my own Live projects get played fine (e.g. in iTunes), but the Swaka and the AbleTen packs that I've downloaded don't play their aif outside Live... OS X Finder doesn't read them properly, saying they're empty... very odd...

[nicktc]

Yep .. it's wierd alright.

I guess it must have something to do with the .asd files that accompany them ...

not very friendly tho

N

[colin301]

Mysterious! I have the same problem. Pretty certain it's nothing to do with .asd files as only Live references these files. I can open them in my audio editor [Peak], which recognises them as 24bit 48k aiffs, but playback is just overloaded noise. You can always load the files in Live and export audio if you want to be able to use them in another app, but does anybody know WHY other apps can't open these files directly?

[Atomikat]

Oh yes, that's the henke's curse, you can't use them outside Live or they will crash any program...

[topaz]

Maybe they are raw files with aiff as the name.

Or ableton have their own locked codec drm ?

[colin301]

I think i've found what's up. I opened a couple of the files in a hex editor and there's some data in the file headers [highlighted in image below] that's clearly Ableton specific and i guess that's what prevents them being opened by any other app.

[KrisM]

Not friendly at all.

Export them from Live and stick it to The Man!

[topaz]

why do such a thing when you can just render/bounce etc

seems totally anal to me, sort it out ableton.

that's clearly Ableton specific and i guess that's what prevents them being opened by any other app.

[nicktc]

Thanx for looking into that colin301 ... interesting

Trying to strip out the Ableton code could be a bit tricky!!!

But it does point to the possibility that someone with a high geek factor could figure it out ..

oh yeah .. someone from Ableton could do it!!

N

[colin301]

Looked into this a little more. It's definitely not a problem with the Live Pack format in general - when i create my own Live Pack, the samples contained play back normally in other apps. Same goes for samples from other Live Packs i've downloaded. It appears only to be samples in Live Packs i've downloaded from Ableton site [Sawka's + Samplification for sure - they're the only ones i've installed] that won't open directly in other apps. Seems totally pointless for Ableton to "protect" files in this way, specially as it's so easy to get around by loading any of these files into arrangement and exporting, or am i missing something?

Anyone from Ableton reading this thread, please give us your take on this issue.

[[nis]]

Hi,

aiff files that belong to certain add-on products (e.g. EIC, Session Drums, Drum Machines, etc.) are encrypted and can't be opened in any other software.

Best,
Nico

[topaz]

Hi Nico

why when one can just bounce, freeze or any other number of options.

This also effects all the live intro content .

Seems like a bizzare thing to do from here.

Hi,

aiff files that belong to certain add-on products (e.g. EIC, Session Drums, Drum Machines, etc.) are encrypted and can't be opened in any other software.

Best,
Nico

[nicktc]

Thanks for the definitive response nico.

Not what I wanted to hear but pretty unequivocal !

Is there any reasoning behind this ...?

In fact do these modified files still come under the aif specification?

[bleblans]

Hi Ableton,

Is this copyright thing still actual?
I'm trying to load my .aif files from the Ableton packs in Audiofinder (http://www.icedaudio.com/site/)but it wont read the files (as described above) ...

I hope you can arrange something with Iced Audio to get this working.

Thanks,
Bart