krizrox
I think I know the answer to this question but I wanted to check with the experts to see if there were any good answers. Guess I'm not very bright when it comes to distributing large files across the internet. ZIP doesn't seem to really compress the size of a WAV file at all. I think I knew this from a long time ago. But I thought I'd try again and sure enough - it didn't seem to do much of anything. But I'm using the stock ZIP routine in Windoze XP so maybe there is a better version of it out there? RAR? Or what is another alternative that doesn't require a degree in brain surgery and is easy for noobs to understand? thanks!
Actually Larry, WinZip IS the correct answer believe it or not. The problem is, the version you may be running. Thanks to Bapu, when I joined the Coffee House Band, it was mandatory that I had at least Winzip 14 at the time. The reason being, it supports zipx compression which is truly off the hook for wave files. It doesn't hold any of the blank space in a wave as counting for the actual size. It just compresses the audio part and man let me tell you, it's absolute insanity as to how it does it.
I can turn a 54mb wave into a 27mb wave. The bigger the file, the more it makes a difference.
The next solution you may want to consider, is exporting your wave data out as a broadcast wave and then zipping it up using Winzip zipx. The broadcast wave will get rid of any dead space in the beginning of the file and will just import it straight into your client other party's DAW at the exact time it's supposed to be. The only issue you may have is if this is pro tools. My pro tools system totally jacks up broadcast waves. When I create one and then bring it into Sonar, it's usually oh....an hour off. Literally! It will place the wave file an hour away in the time marker in the song. It happens everytime.
But when I export a BW from Sonar, it has lined itself up perfectly in other people's versions of Sonar, Adobe Audition 2 and 3, Cubase, Nuendo, Reaper and Audacity. So it's worth a try as it will just give them the wave in the right spot minus the extra space in the wave file.
But seriously, try the newest version of WinZip that supports zipx...it's amazing for everything, especially wave files and audio of any kind. Best of luck.
-Danny