Extract Audio from 3GPP to VOC — Free Online Tool
Extract audio from 3GPP mobile video files and save it as a VOC file — the classic Creative Labs format used in DOS-era Sound Blaster applications. The conversion decodes the AAC or MP3 audio track from your 3GP container and re-encodes it as uncompressed 8-bit PCM, producing a lossless VOC file compatible with retro gaming tools and legacy DOS software.
to
FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
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Settings
Note: Browser-based encoding uses approximate quality targets. For precise CRF compression, copy the FFmpeg command above and run it on your desktop.
Estimated output:
Conversion Complete!
DownloadHow It Works
3GPP files store audio using lossy codecs — typically AAC at low bitrates optimized for mobile networks, sometimes MP3. VOC is a raw PCM container developed by Creative Labs, and this conversion strips the video stream entirely, then decodes the compressed mobile audio and re-encodes it as unsigned 8-bit PCM (pcm_u8) at whatever sample rate the source uses. Because the source audio is lossy (AAC or MP3) and the output is uncompressed PCM, there is no additional lossy compression step — the decoded audio is written directly to the VOC container. The resulting file is larger than the original audio stream but carries no further generation loss beyond what was already present in the 3GP source. The video track is discarded completely.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg tool. In the browser, this runs via FFmpeg.wasm compiled to WebAssembly, executing the same command logic as desktop FFmpeg entirely within your browser tab — no server involved. |
-i input.3gp
|
Specifies the input file as a 3GPP container (.3gp), which FFmpeg will demux to access the compressed audio stream (typically AAC) and the video stream stored inside. |
-vn
|
Disables video output entirely, telling FFmpeg to ignore the video stream from the 3GP file. This is essential because VOC is a pure audio format and cannot carry video data. |
-c:a pcm_u8
|
Decodes the source AAC audio from the 3GP file and re-encodes it as unsigned 8-bit PCM — the native audio encoding of the VOC format originally designed for Creative Labs Sound Blaster hardware. |
output.voc
|
Sets the output filename with the .voc extension, which tells FFmpeg to write the audio into a Creative Labs VOC container structured with the block-based format expected by DOS-era Sound Blaster applications and emulators like DOSBox. |
Common Use Cases
- Extracting voice recordings or sound clips from old 3GP files recorded on early Nokia or Sony Ericsson phones for use in a DOS emulator or retro game modding project
- Preparing audio assets from 3GP mobile video files for import into Sound Blaster-era tools or tracker software that only accepts VOC input
- Converting 3GP audio clips to VOC format for playback in DOSBox-based applications or classic multimedia titles that expect Creative Labs audio files
- Archiving audio from 3GPP multimedia messages (MMS) into a format compatible with legacy audio editing software from the 1990s
- Extracting and converting a spoken-word or sound-effect clip from a 3GP file to VOC for use as a sample in chiptune or demoscene productions
- Recovering audio from a 3GP file on a system where only legacy DOS-era sound utilities are available, by producing a format those tools can natively open
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The audio in a 3GP file is stored as AAC or MP3, both of which are lossy formats compressed for mobile delivery — often at bitrates as low as 32k to 64k. Converting to VOC with pcm_u8 decodes that compressed audio into uncompressed PCM, but the quality lost during the original AAC or MP3 encoding cannot be recovered. The VOC file will be an accurate, uncompressed representation of what the 3GP audio sounded like, not a higher-fidelity version of the original recording.
3GP files use lossy compression (AAC or MP3) to keep file sizes small for mobile networks, often achieving compression ratios of 10:1 or more. VOC with pcm_u8 stores raw, uncompressed audio samples with no compression at all. A 1-minute 3GP audio track might be 400–500 KB, while the same audio as uncompressed PCM in a VOC file could be several megabytes depending on the sample rate. This size increase is expected and normal for a lossless container.
pcm_u8 means unsigned 8-bit pulse-code modulation — each audio sample is stored as an integer from 0 to 255. This is the native bit depth of the VOC format and matches what Sound Blaster hardware was designed to play. Compared to 16-bit PCM, 8-bit audio has a lower dynamic range and introduces slight quantization noise, particularly in quiet passages. For audio that was already heavily compressed as mobile AAC, this difference is usually not perceptible, but it is a real technical distinction from higher-fidelity PCM formats.
Yes. VOC supports 16-bit signed PCM via the pcm_s16le codec. You can modify the command to: ffmpeg -i input.3gp -vn -c:a pcm_s16le output.voc. This produces higher dynamic range audio with less quantization noise than pcm_u8 and results in a larger file. However, some legacy DOS tools and VOC players only support the original 8-bit format, so check compatibility with your target software before switching.
No. The VOC format was designed in the early 1990s for Sound Blaster hardware and has no metadata fields for tags like title, date, artist, or device information. Any metadata stored in the 3GP container — such as creation timestamps, GPS coordinates, or encoder information common in mobile video files — is silently discarded during conversion. If preserving that metadata matters, record it separately before converting.
On Linux or macOS, you can loop over files in a directory with: for f in *.3gp; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -vn -c:a pcm_u8 "${f%.3gp}.voc"; done. On Windows Command Prompt, use: for %f in (*.3gp) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -vn -c:a pcm_u8 "%~nf.voc". This applies the same audio extraction and pcm_u8 encoding to every 3GP file in the folder, producing a matching VOC file for each. The browser-based tool processes one file at a time, so the command line is the recommended approach for bulk conversions.
Technical Notes
3GPP (.3gp) is a container format standardized for 3G mobile devices and stores audio almost exclusively in AAC (the default) or occasionally MP3, both at low bitrates suited to constrained mobile bandwidth. VOC is a simple sequential container created by Creative Labs in 1989, structured as a series of typed data blocks, with audio stored as raw PCM — either unsigned 8-bit or signed 16-bit little-endian. There is no concept of a sample rate header negotiation beyond what is embedded in the VOC block itself, so FFmpeg carries the source sample rate through into the output. One important limitation: pcm_u8 is inherently 8-bit, which means the dynamic range is capped at roughly 48 dB — significantly below CD-quality 16-bit audio. For 3GP files recorded at phone-call quality (8 kHz, mono, low-bitrate AAC), this is unlikely to be a meaningful degradation. For higher-quality 3GP recordings (44.1 kHz stereo), the downgrade to 8-bit will be audible. The -vn flag ensures the video stream is completely ignored and not written to the output, which is necessary because VOC has no video support whatsoever. No subtitle, chapter, or secondary audio track data from the 3GP file survives this conversion, consistent with VOC's single-stream, audio-only design.