If you're like me, you think the iPhone is pretty cool but you wouldn't buy one for a number of reasons. Most notably because the iPhone only officially supports AT&T, which traditionally is one of worst wireless carriers in terms of customer service, pricing, and overall customer satisfaction. I enjoy playing with an iPhone at the Apple Store, but I wouldn't give into the $200+ price tag and a ridiculous 2-year commitment with AT&T. However, I do like the iPhone system sounds; the alerts you hear when you receive a text (SMS) message, etc. I went on a hunting expedition across the web, and finally found a decent forum or two with the sounds available for download.
I've converted the audio files from CAF's to MP3's, which can be downloaded here (377 KB).
FOLLOWUP 6/4/09:
I recently received a nice email from Staci regarding her quest to convert an iPhone CAF file to an MP3. As it turns out, Staci had some success using GoldWave to open a CAF file. From there, she was able to save it as a WAV and MP3:
"I opened Gold Wave, then clicked on "New". Then I went up and clicked on "Options" then on "File Format..." Then you click on "Add" and that's where I typed in the "caf" or ".caf"....don't actually remember if I had to type the dot...anyway....when I finished that, then I just opened my .caf file under "File" then "open". I did a save as, then I saved it as both a .wav and a .mp3 file.so GoldWave DID save my file as an .mp3. THANK YOU!"
I haven't personally tried this conversion method, but if it worked for Staci it might also work for you.
I've converted the audio files from CAF's to MP3's, which can be downloaded here (377 KB).
FOLLOWUP 6/4/09:
I recently received a nice email from Staci regarding her quest to convert an iPhone CAF file to an MP3. As it turns out, Staci had some success using GoldWave to open a CAF file. From there, she was able to save it as a WAV and MP3:
"I opened Gold Wave, then clicked on "New". Then I went up and clicked on "Options" then on "File Format..." Then you click on "Add" and that's where I typed in the "caf" or ".caf"....don't actually remember if I had to type the dot...anyway....when I finished that, then I just opened my .caf file under "File" then "open". I did a save as, then I saved it as both a .wav and a .mp3 file.so GoldWave DID save my file as an .mp3. THANK YOU!"
I haven't personally tried this conversion method, but if it worked for Staci it might also work for you.
How do you actually convert a CAF file to an MP3?
Good question, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure. Looking at the CAF file specification from Apple, it appears that CAF's are a container format. What this means is that the actual audio sound data is encapsulated inside of a wrapper, "the container." At the start of the CAF file, you'll find some "header metadata" and other details about the audio data enclosed in the CAF. Any of the subsequent bytes will be the actual audio data itself, maybe in an AIFF format. To extract the actual audio data from the CAF, you'll need to parse out the header metadata and then read/extract the audio data itself. Perhaps I'll write a quick program to do this one day. Until then, I don't have a good answer for you.
I tried to use some Windows based tools that claimed they could extract audio data from a CAF file, but they were a miserable failure.
So, then how did you convert the iPhone CAF's to MP3's?
After some digging, I found that Apple's QuickTime plays CAF audio files. Using GoldWave together with QuickTime, I played the CAF file in QuickTime while using GoldWave to record from the Windows mixer input. So basically I piped the audio output of QuickTime directly into GoldWave, then saved the sounds as a WAV file. From there, I converted them into MP3's using Bladeenc.
Did you find this post helpful, or at least, interesting?