[LAU] recycle users wanted

Hello lists :)

First, an introduction. Within the context of this mail I'm
representing re-lab -- a small project [1] that does a dirty job
developers usually try to avoid -- reverse-engineering file formats
that have no publicly available specs. Our primary goal is helping dev
teams and therefore end-users to support legacy data.

We started with Corel DRAW back in 2007 (supported by Inkscape, sK1
and UniConvertor now), continued with painting dynamics in Photoshop
brushes (supported by Krita in SVN trunk) and Photoshop gradients
(supported by SwatchBooker), and now we arrive to audio domain.

A while ago we asked Ardour team if they wanted some file formats
reverse-engineered. Paul named a couple of such file formats,
including REX2 audio loops [2].

Since we are (at least pretend to be) nice guys, we started with
mailing Propellerhead, but they never replied (only to be expected,
given their track record re open source teams). Well, something had to
be done about that, eh? So we started looking into things.

Initial version of Python scripts that parse .rx2 files and dump stuff
to stdout is already available [3]. This is exactly what deliver in
the end: Python scripts for parsing and a specification that explains
what every chunk does.

Now here is what we need. All we have right now is a bunch of .rx2
files that I got with my Focusrite Saffire Pro24 and bundled software.
It's good for a start, but for proper r-e we need introducing small
changes to files and seeing what's changed. So we need someone with a
licensed copy of ReCycle and some spare time on his/her hands to help
us figuring things out.

Demo version of ReCycle works fine in WINE, but saving and loading
arbitrary files is impossible. We really do not want dealing with
pirated copies, because, again, we do our best to be nice guys.

And since we do it not just for fun, but for actual results, we'd be
glad if developers of other applications (FreeCycle and Smasher are
the first I can think of) implemented support for REX2.

Coincidentally we are also interested in people who are good at audio
compression algorithms. *cough* Monty *cough* :)

By the way, usually I don't read both l-a-u and l-a-d lists, so after
a while (a week maybe) I'll turn off delivery of mails, which means
you probably want using Reply to All button in your mail client of
choice.

[1] http://gitorious.org/re-lab/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REX2
[3] http://gitorious.org/re-lab/audio

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org
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Received on Fri Dec 10 00:15:01 2010