converting audio file to byte array

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Hello, i need to convert an audio file which may be wav or mp3 or any audio format to a byte array then encrypt every byte with a key which i choose...i am trying to find how to convert an audio file to byte array but i cant find anything...any help?

Posted 10-Feb-13 8:11am

Aseel_Y.

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OriginalGriff · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-10T08:17:00

Solution 1

Simple:

VB

Dim data As Byte() = File.ReadAllBytes(path)

Posted 10-Feb-13 8:17am

OriginalGriff

Comments

Aseel_Y. 14-Feb-13 12:52pm

Thank you.. that helped me :)

OriginalGriff 14-Feb-13 14:06pm

You're welcome!

Aseel_Y. 15-Feb-13 4:40am

I have one more request please..
I converted the audio files to byte array, then as I needed to convert it to binary and XOr it with a fixed key I chose, after which I converted the XOred strings to byte array again.
The problem I faced was that I needed to save my edited byte array to audio file again, the file was successfully created, but it wouldn't play in any player..
I used the code:

Dim nf As FileStream
nf = New FileStream("test2.wma", FileMode.Create)
nf.Write(bytes_e, 0, bytes_e.Length)
nf.Close()

is it normal that it wouldn't play after the transformation, or I should do something to adjust it?
Thank you...

Aseel_Y. 15-Feb-13 4:52am

Now I took the transformed file and XOred it with the same key again (converted to original again) and played the file and it perfectly worked.. so maybe it's not suppose to play when it's content is changed?

OriginalGriff 15-Feb-13 4:56am

No, of course it's not supposed to play if you just XOR it once!
Would you expect to read a message from me if I XORed each byte with 0xCC once? :laugh:

OriginalGriff 15-Feb-13 4:55am

If you XORed each byte correctly twice, then you would get back the original bytes.
So the first thing to do is check if your XOR worked: did you write a single method for it and call it twice? If so, then do a check - create a small string of known bytes, and pass it though the method twice - do you get the same output as input?
If you do, then try using File.WriteAllBytes instead of the stream - that should ensure there is no conversion. Then try looking at the input and output files with a hex viewer - do they look the same? if not, how are they different?

Aseel_Y. 15-Feb-13 5:02am

Thank you so so much, I just thought it should play but with some noise you know? :D
This way my problem is solved now cause the file played perfectly well after I XOred it again..
Thank you so much for your help :)

OriginalGriff 15-Feb-13 5:21am

You're welcome!

Aseel_Y. 15-Feb-13 8:37am

Ummm.. U know I've been like an asking machine today but one more thing please :D
The last problem I'm facing is that the process of XORing all the elements of the array takes a bit long time like about a minute or more, how can I solve that?

OriginalGriff 15-Feb-13 9:26am

Depends on quite a lot of things - most of them related to how you are actually doing it! Post your code and I'll see if I can suggest anything.

Why are you doing this anyway?

Aseel_Y. 15-Feb-13 10:26am

well.. I need it as a part of an assignment from my teacher in which I suppose to make an application that makes text chat and file transfer between two computers, which I finally did.. so my next assignment is to encipher those files and decipher them again, we're not sure of the encryption method so he just told me to do all this mess and try the simple XOR... Then we'll see what he'll come up with next.

this is the sub:

Sub encipher(ByRef barr1() As String)
Dim key As String = "11111111"
Dim x As Integer
Dim s As String
Dim b As String

For j = 0 To barr1.Length - 1
s = ""
b = barr1(j)
For i = 0 To 7
x = Val(b(i)) Xor Val(key(i))
s &= x
Next
barr1(j) = s
Next
End Sub
Thanks again :)

OriginalGriff 15-Feb-13 10:45am

Ooooow! Nasty, nasty. Not your fault, but...
Did anyone tell you that strings are "immutable"?
What that means is that when you create a string in .NET that's it - you can't change (or "mutate" which is where "mutable" comes from) it in any way. When you append a single character to a string what the system does in the background is allocate a chink of memory the same length as the existing string plus one character, copy teh string contents in, then adds the extra character on. So if your file is say 1Mb, then an extra 1,000,000 strings are allocated, copied, and thrown away - thismenas the system is pretty much busy most of the time playing with it's memory, trying to find out what it can throw away in order to make room for the next string it will try and thorw away very soon... :laugh:

If you want to use files and encrypt them, don't touch strings. Read them from teh file as bytes into a byte array, then modify the byte directly in that array (or copy it first into another the same size) by XOR ing each byte back to where it came from. The one thing you don't want to do is handle them as string data, because strings implies characters, which are frequently translated if yoiu do not fit into the current culture.
If you read an MP3 file, read it as bytes, because the data is bytes - it isn't ASCII or Unicode or any of teh character based data types - it is straightr eight bit byte values, and should be treated as such.

It's also very, very easy to read a file as bytes:
Dim data as Byte() = File.ReadAllBytes(path)
will do it, and File.WriteAllBytes will put it back to disk.

Aseel_Y. 15-Feb-13 11:18am

Thank you so much.. I did really much mess up there, too complex, too problematic. Now my work is problemfree.. thanks alot :)

OriginalGriff 15-Feb-13 12:04pm

You're welcome!
(You should also find that having it in a byte array helps with the next stage of the encryption lesson! :EvilGrinSmiley: )

Aseel_Y. 15-Feb-13 12:11pm

Thank you again.. you really helped me.. Actually for the first time during this project I feel less fuzzy! I appreciate your help :)