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bin files that I want to detect if they're atrac or not... how is this possible? Is anyone here familiar with the good old .atrac extension?

EDIT: It is to my understanding that atrac files have either the .AA3 extension or the .OMA extension.

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5 Answers

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In the sample I found on the Internet, it seems like the RIFF format acts as a "wrapper" for this file.

In that case, the first 4 bytes of the file contain the 4 characters "RIFF".

As a codec such as ATRAC may be wrapped in more than one "wrapper", you can examine the first few bytes of your .bin files. Normally for multimedia files, these bytes identify the file's format.

EDIT

I have managed to convert the ATRAC sample file I found to .wav. The utilities I used were:

Sony ATRAC3 Audio Codec 0.98
WavePad Sound Editor

I changed the file to .oma for it to work, then used WavePad's SaveAs.
However, you will need to do the files one by one, as the batch convert option is in the commercial version of WavePad.

Unfortunately, my first choice of Audacity did not work.

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RIFF can be a container for a lot of things, not all of them audio. The number of streams and specific codec(s) used will have to be examined as well. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Sep 9 '10 at 6:19
I definately see the RIFF. I'm not sure if this will help or not but after that it says: RIFF..%.WAVEfmt – FlavorOfLife Sep 9 '10 at 6:59
The "RIFF" pertains to the wrapper. As ATRAC is an older version of WAV, wavefmt contains info about the encoding itself. Even when ATRAC is wrapped in a non-RIFF wrapper, it will still likely contain wavefmt (although not the "RIFF" stamp). However, ATRAC seems very likely to always be wrapped in RIFF. You cannot rely on the position of the wavefmt header in the file, except if all .bin files were created by the same software. – harrymc Sep 9 '10 at 7:26
Thank you harrymc. Maybe I should include more information about what I'm trying to do. ATRAC being from Sony, I'm looking right now at a folder containing all the audio files for a Sony PSP game. I basically want to extract the audio files to make ringtones (MP3). I do believe they all the the RIFF as I've sorted the folder according to file size and saw this was the case (larger files which were the actual audio files had RIFF, while smaller files which were coding didn't). However having said that, I'm not sure how to get these .bin files to play on VLC, should I rename and convert to MP3? – FlavorOfLife Sep 9 '10 at 7:44
You can try renaming and playing on several players. But if this doesn't work you will need an audio conversion program. Did you succeed in playing such a file? – harrymc Sep 9 '10 at 8:02
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you could always just temporarily rename one of the .bin files to .aa3 or .oma and the try opening them. good players will just give you an error if the format is not ok

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Thanks, I tried that but I have like about a hundred .bin files which aren't all necessarily audio files. – FlavorOfLife Sep 9 '10 at 5:58
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The file tool will give you a best guess as to what the file is.

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Can you explain more about this file tool? Google results didn't help me, thanks – FlavorOfLife Sep 9 '10 at 6:44
I'm using Windows 7, how can I do this? – FlavorOfLife Sep 9 '10 at 7:11
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As far as I know if bin files contain audio files you can simply drag them into VLC player . if it is a audio file VLC should be able to play. You may add all the bin files to its player list.

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Looks like you have tried this method as Dafoosa has already said it but still make sure whether VLC can play it or not – subanki Sep 9 '10 at 6:20
VLC plays (it actually states that the track which I've suspected is 4 mins long), though no audio can be heard. – FlavorOfLife Sep 9 '10 at 6:43
sorry mate i am clueless here. Are you talking about bin and cue files if so then they are image files – subanki Sep 9 '10 at 6:56
Nah, the folder just includes a bunch of bin files. Cheers for the contribution. – FlavorOfLife Sep 9 '10 at 7:05
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Perhaps rather than looking at what is an audio file, you might want to look at what a bin file is if it is not an audio file.
Are they executables? They sound like you might be on a *nix system.
I know in Windows all executables start with the bytes that are the ASCII characters MZ. If the bin files that aren't audio start with a couple of patterns, you could eliminate a lot of files in your search for audio easily by just analysing the first couple of bytes.

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