Sound Designer II Files will not open.

mtunze · Post by **mtunze** » Tue Mar 03, 2020 6:07 pm

When I try to open my .sd2 files I get a dialog that says: This file does not seem to be a valid SoundDesigner II audio file.

They were always valid before. This happens on my studio iMac running Mountain Lion and on my laptop running Catalina.

Post by **Martin Hairer** » Tue Mar 03, 2020 8:56 pm

Hi, could you send me a link to a zip archive containing a couple of sample files?

Also, please do move over to a different format. SD2 is based on resource forks which have been deprecated by Apple for years now (since 2009 in fact), so there *will* be a version of macOS at some point (and probably sooner rather than later) that *will* break them. Regards,

Martin

--
HairerSoft
http://www.hairersoft.com/

mtunze · Post by **mtunze** » Wed Mar 04, 2020 2:53 am

Thanks for your response. I figured .sd2 was on it's way out when most of the competitors audio editors don't list the format.

I have .sd2 files going back to 1994. I did find a converter.

I'll get you a file or two over the next couple of days.

mtunze · Post by **mtunze** » Wed Mar 04, 2020 1:41 pm

Also I noticed that in trying to open .sd2 files, the files I tried to open became unreadable after trying open. The size on one file went from 250 meg to 266 bytes. The converter I found wouldn't recognize the file afterwards. It recognized .sd2 that I had not tried to open with Amadeus Pro.

Post by **Martin Hairer** » Wed Mar 04, 2020 2:56 pm

OK, the version at

http://www.hairersoft.com/Downloads/AmadeusPro.zip

should now again open the SDII files correctly. You should also be able to use it to batch-convert them to a more stable format (I would recommend AIFF unless the files are larger than 2GB in size, in which case CAF is better). Regards,

Martin

--
HairerSoft
http://www.hairersoft.com/

mtunze · Post by **mtunze** » Wed Mar 04, 2020 7:51 pm

Thnx.

RV Projektas · Post by **RV Projektas** » Wed Feb 12, 2025 5:48 pm

Hello.

Just bought Pro version yesterday and after several attempts to batch convert my SDII files had no luck.

Found this post and decided to continue report on this issue.

SO through open menu my files are grey, not selectable.
When importing raw data they open, but plays in a high speed, like it could not detect sample rate or something.
I can save them to wave file one by one, bus playback speed is very high and a lot of work.

When I use new batch processor and drop some folders, response is 'no valid file was selected'

Have work to do so quite urgent.

THank you

Post by **Martin Hairer** » Thu Feb 13, 2025 12:23 am

As mentioned above, SDII files use resource forks for data storage which has been deprecated for many years and can easily break when moving them between file storage systems. I would very strongly recommend to convert your SDII files into some better supported format like AIFF or CAF.

You should be able to use "Import Raw Data" to read them as long as you select the correct bit depth and sample rate.

www.hairersoft.com