What's "Broadcast WAV"

mike_o · Post by **mike_o** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 10:57 am

what is the difference between .wav and broadcast wav, I've heard some exitement about DP's new support for these, but why, how are they different and what are the benefits?

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 11:02 am

I'll take a shot at it. BWAV is more common apparently and can be read by more DAWs on different platforms. BWAV can retain time-stamping information with the file where as standard WAV cannot. SD2 is really a very old format that as I recall, even Digidesign (who created it) isn't using it. It's funny... it's a format named after an application: Sound Designer. Brings back memories of my first Audiomedia II card.

bralston · Post by **bralston** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 11:07 am

Broadcast Wave is the new industry standard for audio recording. It has a lot of meta data in the header of the file for time stamping info and the like. It is what Pro Tools now uses. I would highly recommend to anyone that all future DP projects (now that we have the choice in DP6) be recorded in Broadcast wave format to help facilitate greater compatibility with other DAWs in the market that are also moving to Broadcast wave. It will also be a much more stable audio file than SDII which has more of a tendency to get corrupted header information.

mike_o · Post by **mike_o** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 11:12 am

thanks for the heads up, but what is meta data?

carrythebanner · Post by **carrythebanner** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 11:16 am

mike_o wrote:thanks for the heads up, but what is meta data?

Strictly speaking, it means "data about data". In this context, it refers to additional information about the audio file — timestamp, date recorded, etc. — that's stored within the audio file.

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 12:10 pm

By the way, there is a glossary of some abbreviations and acronyms we commonly see in this forum on page 2 of the tips sheet. Not a complete solution, but liable to have the acronyms you're looking for. If not, it has a link to another dictionary. If you find that an important acronym or abbreviation is not present, send it to me and I'll try to include it.

Shooshie

monkey man · Post by **monkey man** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:09 am

Thank you for clearing that up and for the sound(!) advice, Brian.
I've been wondering about which format to choose but figured I'd ask when DP6 eventually arrives down under.
Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

Silly question maybe, but is the file type easily read by most OSes, the Finder and CD players etc?
Forgive my ignorance, please.

carrythebanner · Post by **carrythebanner** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 6:41 am

monkey man wrote:Silly question maybe, but is the file type easily read by most OSes, the Finder and CD players etc?

Properly written Broadcast WAVE files should appear as regular WAVE files to apps that aren't hep to the BWAV info in the file. WAVE is a pretty ubiquitous format so there shouldn't be any problems getting DP's BWAV files to play elsewhere.

monkey man · Post by **monkey man** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 6:46 am

Ahh... good news, carrythebanner.
Sounds like some sort of future-proofing for DP projects can be achieved then.

Thank you!

tripit@earthlink.net · Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:06 pm

James Steele wrote:I'll take a shot at it. BWAV is more common apparently and can be read by more DAWs on different platforms. BWAV can retain time-stamping information with the file where as standard WAV cannot. SD2 is really a very old format that as I recall, even Digidesign (who created it) isn't using it. It's funny... it's a format named after an application: Sound Designer. Brings back memories of my first Audiomedia II card.

I had that card as well. Also had the original Soundtools app, the precursor to to Sound Designer. Man that was a long time ago.

wurliuchi · Post by **wurliuchi** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:54 pm

I'm curious. When you look at a sound file in the finder, how can you tell if it's a wave or broadcast wave? They seem to all just say wav. Is one WAVE and the other wave?

Thanks

Mr_Clifford · Post by **Mr_Clifford** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 6:22 pm

wurliuchi wrote:I'm curious. When you look at a sound file in the finder, how can you tell if it's a wave or broadcast wave? They seem to all just say wav. Is one WAVE and the other wave?

Thanks

You can't tell the difference really. From what I can tell, Broadcast Wave just took the original Wave format and added extra metadata to enable timestamping, tempo information etc. So if you have a program like 'snapper' and you bring up the file info and there's a timestamp other than 0:00:00:00 then you know it's Broadcast Wave.

Personally, I'm quite looking forward to kissing the SDII format goodbye forever. Well except for when I have to go back to old archived DP projects.

PrimeMover · Post by **PrimeMover** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 6:43 pm

Just a word of warning... BWav doesn't seem to play very well with my iPod. Sometimes they work, sometimes they crash the little bugger. So, if you drag one into iTunes, as a way of demoing the track later on an iPod or iPhone, you might want to get iTunes to re-encode it as a standard WAV file. I'll have to experiment with this, but I'm guessing it's why I had problems this morning.

I like to demo tracks in the car, while I'm driving around, as a way of hearing how they'll sound to other people... that and... I just like listening to my music

wurliuchi · Post by **wurliuchi** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 6:48 pm

Mr_Clifford wrote:
wurliuchi wrote:I'm curious. When you look at a sound file in the finder, how can you tell if it's a wave or broadcast wave? They seem to all just say wav. Is one WAVE and the other wave?

Thanks
You can't tell the difference really. From what I can tell, Broadcast Wave just took the original Wave format and added extra metadata to enable timestamping, tempo information etc. So if you have a program like 'snapper' and you bring up the file info and there's a timestamp other than 0:00:00:00 then you know it's Broadcast Wave.

Personally, I'm quite looking forward to kissing the SDII format goodbye forever. Well except for when I have to go back to old archived DP projects.

Thanks!

I too have been looking forward to using bwav, too. Losing time stamps has bitten me in the butt a couple of times.

I started tracking my first project in DP6 yesterday, but I forgot to check the preferences. When I looked later I found it was set to "SDII for current project." Dang! I had set up the tracks for this project in DP5.11 before I got DP6 and I guess that's why it was like that. No big deal, of course, but I was a little disappointed.

BTW, the tracking session went fine. Nothing horrible happened because I was working in DP6. Yeah, I got lost a couple of times, but nothing major. It was kind of fun. Very low-pressure session, though.

Phil O · Post by **Phil O** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 7:31 pm

Perhaps this is a little off topic but what about 24 bit vs 32 bit floating point. Has anyone experimented yet with this format in DP6? Advantages, disadvantages?

Phil