Transcribe a long Sound Designer II file archive audio from older Pro Tools sessions.
A long Sound Designer II file is uncompressed audio from older Pro Tools sessions, about 518 MB an hour for a 24-bit, 48 kHz mono track, so a 3-hour interview track is near 1.6 GB and transcribes in about 6 minutes once it is converted to WAV or MP3. The first 20 minutes are free on a first visit, and 180 minutes fit the $6 pack of 500.
SD2, explained
A Mac-era studio format that holds the audio in one part of the file and the settings in another.
Where SD2 files come from
Sound Designer II was the native audio format of early Pro Tools and other Mac studio software through the 1990s and early 2000s. Radio documentaries, oral history projects, music interviews and podcasts recorded then often survive as folders of .sd2 tracks, one per microphone. Later Pro Tools versions moved to WAV and AIFF.
The missing settings
On a classic Mac file system, an SD2 file kept its sample rate and bit depth in a separate resource fork. Copied through a Windows drive, a zip file or an email, that part is often lost and only the raw audio remains. The samples are usually still there, big-endian, at 16 or 24 bits and 44.1 or 48 kHz.
Converting it
SD2 rarely uploads as it is. If the upload refuses it, convert to MP3 or MP4 with ffmpeg or VLC. Where the settings are lost, tell ffmpeg what the audio is, for example ffmpeg -f s24be -ar 48000 -ac 1 -i track.sd2 track.mp3, and try s16be or 44100 if the voice sounds wrong. Upload here under 500 MB, or through upload page for larger files.
Archive tapes become text
A long interview track returns a brief of the conversation, chapters with timestamps, the names, places and dates mentioned, the questions it answers, and a chat over the text. Interviewer and interviewee are identified and named in the summary, key quotes and chapters.
Why SD2 archives are stuck
The recordings are excellent. The software that opened them is decades old.
✗ A folder no program reads
Tracks from an old session sit on a drive, and the studio Mac that made them is gone.
- Files that show as unknown documents
- Settings lost in a copy years ago
- Raw imports that play as noise
- Hours of interviews never logged
- Tools that stop after an hour
- No index of what the archive holds
✓ An archive you can search
Convert each track once, upload, and get a transcript with chapters.
- Three hours in about 6 minutes
- Names and dates in the brief
- Speakers named in the summary
- Passages found by timestamp
- $6 for 500 minutes
- Five export formats
Sample
Part of an archived interview, as text.
Illustrative only: written for this page. The interview, people and places are invented.
Export
One transcript. Five clean formats.
Every pack exports all five — no format is held back for a higher tier.
Plain text
De-ummed paragraphs. Ready to paste.
SRT captions
Timed to the speech. Every video editor reads this.
WebVTT
HTML5 player + YouTube uploads.
Show notes
Formatted with chapters and pull-quotes.
Machine-readable
Timestamped text for your own tools.
Pricing
Honest pricing, no surprises.
A pack from $6 (500 minutes) opens the full transcript. After that, no subscription and no auto-renew — every tier is a one-time minute pack, and credits never expire. Buy once, use the minutes whenever you need them.
Casual pack
$6/500 min
8 hours of audio — $0.72 an hour. One-time — credits never expire.
- 500 minutes of audio
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
- Executive summary & key quote
Best value
$12/2,000 min
33 hours of audio — $0.36 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 2,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
Bulk pack
$24/5,000 min
83 hours of audio — $0.29 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Long Sound Designer II files, the common questions.
Will an SD2 file upload as it is?
Rarely. Few current programs read Sound Designer II, so convert each track to WAV or MP3 first and upload the converted file.
The session has one SD2 file per microphone. Which do I upload?
Upload a mixdown if you have one, or the track that carries the clearest voices. Transcribing every microphone track separately counts each track's minutes, so a two-mic interview would use twice the minutes.
How big is an SD2 file per hour?
16-bit, 44.1 kHz stereo is about 635 MB an hour; 24-bit, 48 kHz mono about 518 MB; 24-bit, 48 kHz stereo about 1 GB. A converted MP3 at 96 kbps is about 43 MB an hour.
What does an archive cost?
Forty interview tracks of 90 minutes come to 3,600 minutes, which the $24 pack of 5,000 covers with 1,400 left. A documentary series of twelve two-hour tracks, 1,440 minutes, fits the $12 pack of 2,000. The first 20 minutes on a first visit are free, and packs never expire.
How long does it take?
About 2 minutes per audio hour after upload: three hours in roughly 6 minutes. A track over 2 GB before a first pack starts once a pack is on the account, and anything over 10 hours goes in as two files.
Which languages, and is the archive kept private?
99 languages are detected automatically. Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training. Downloads come as TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT and JSON.
Related
Related archive formats
Convert the SD2 track. Turn the archive into text.
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