Extract Audio from TS to VOC — Free Online Tool
Extract audio from a MPEG-2 Transport Stream (.ts) file and save it as a VOC file using lossless PCM encoding — ideal for pulling broadcast or streaming audio into a retro-compatible format originally designed for Creative Labs Sound Blaster hardware. The audio is decoded from AAC or AC3 and re-encoded as unsigned 8-bit PCM, the native codec of the VOC container.
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FFmpeg Command
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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
TS files carry multiplexed audio and video streams — often AAC or AC3 audio alongside H.264 or H.265 video — wrapped in a transport stream container designed for broadcast and live streaming. During this conversion, FFmpeg demuxes the TS container, discards all video streams entirely, decodes the audio stream, and re-encodes it as unsigned 8-bit PCM (pcm_u8) inside a VOC container. Because the source audio (typically AAC or AC3) is a compressed lossy format and VOC stores raw uncompressed PCM, the audio must be fully decoded and then written as raw samples — there is no stream copy shortcut. The VOC format does not support multiple audio tracks, so only the first (or default) audio track from the TS file is used.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg command-line tool, which handles all demuxing, decoding, encoding, and muxing operations in this conversion pipeline entirely within your browser via WebAssembly. |
-i input.ts
|
Specifies the input file — an MPEG-2 Transport Stream containing multiplexed video and audio streams, typically used in broadcast television or HLS streaming contexts. |
-vn
|
Disables all video streams from being included in the output, ensuring only the audio is processed and written to the VOC file — since VOC is a pure audio format with no video support. |
-c:a pcm_u8
|
Encodes the decoded audio as unsigned 8-bit PCM, the native and default codec of the VOC format, matching the original Sound Blaster hardware specification that the VOC container was designed for. |
output.voc
|
Specifies the output filename with the .voc extension, which tells FFmpeg to use the VOC muxer and produce a file compatible with Creative Labs Sound Blaster software and DOSBox-style environments. |
Common Use Cases
- Extracting a specific sound effect or jingle from a recorded broadcast TS file to use in a retro DOS-era game or demo scene project that requires VOC audio
- Converting audio captured from a digital TV tuner into VOC format for playback on vintage Sound Blaster hardware or DOSBox-based emulation environments
- Archiving a mono audio segment from a live-streamed TS recording into a simple, uncompressed VOC file for use in legacy multimedia software that only reads VOC
- Pulling dialogue or narration audio out of an HLS-compatible TS segment to embed in a retro-style application or educational tool built around early 90s DOS software
- Stripping the audio track from a broadcast TS file for inspection or testing of raw PCM audio data without any codec overhead or container complexity
- Preparing audio assets from modern transport stream captures for use in vintage game modding communities where VOC is the required sound asset format
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, in a nuanced way. The audio in a TS file is typically stored as AAC or AC3, both of which are lossy compressed formats. When converting to VOC, that audio is decoded from its compressed form and stored as raw unsigned 8-bit PCM. The 8-bit PCM encoding itself introduces significant quantization — only 256 possible amplitude levels — which is a meaningful reduction in fidelity compared to modern 16-bit or 24-bit audio. The lossy compression artifacts from the original AAC or AC3 encoding are also preserved, so the final VOC file reflects both the original compression loss and the 8-bit depth limitation.
The VOC format was designed in the early 1990s for simple sound playback on Sound Blaster cards and does not support multiple audio tracks within a single file. FFmpeg will automatically select the default or first audio stream from the TS file during conversion. If you need audio from a specific track — for example, a secondary language track — you would need to specify it in the FFmpeg command using '-map 0:a:1' (for the second audio track) before the output filename.
AC3 surround audio (e.g., 5.1 channels) will be decoded by FFmpeg and then downmixed to match what the VOC format can store. Since pcm_u8 in a VOC file is typically mono or stereo, FFmpeg will perform automatic channel downmixing. The surround spatial information from the AC3 track will be lost in this process. The result is a stereo or mono unsigned 8-bit PCM file, which is a significant simplification of the original multichannel audio.
Yes, VOC does support 16-bit signed little-endian PCM (pcm_s16le), which offers 65,536 amplitude levels compared to pcm_u8's 256 — a substantial quality improvement. You can modify the command to 'ffmpeg -i input.ts -vn -c:a pcm_s16le output.voc' to use this higher-quality codec. Not all legacy applications that read VOC files support 16-bit samples, so verify your target software or hardware is compatible before switching.
You can add the '-ss' flag for a start time and '-t' flag for duration directly to the FFmpeg command. For example: 'ffmpeg -ss 00:01:30 -i input.ts -vn -t 00:00:45 -c:a pcm_u8 output.voc' will start extraction at 1 minute 30 seconds and capture 45 seconds of audio. Placing '-ss' before '-i' uses fast keyframe seeking, which is efficient for TS files since they are designed for random access in broadcast contexts.
No. The VOC format has essentially no support for metadata — it was designed purely for raw audio playback and contains only a basic header with sample rate, bit depth, and channel count. Any metadata present in the TS file, including language tags, program names, stream identifiers, or broadcast timestamps, will be completely discarded during conversion. If metadata preservation is important, consider a format like FLAC or WAV instead.
Technical Notes
The VOC format stores audio as raw PCM samples with a simple file header and optional block structure — it carries no video, no subtitles, and no chapter markers. The default codec used here is pcm_u8 (unsigned 8-bit PCM), which means audio samples are stored as values from 0 to 255 with 128 representing silence. This 8-bit depth was standard for Sound Blaster hardware in the DOS era but is extremely low by modern standards, resulting in a dynamic range of roughly 48 dB. Sample rates in VOC files are stored using a legacy divisor formula and are typically capped at 44,100 Hz for stereo or higher for mono. FFmpeg handles the sample rate and channel conversion automatically from whatever the TS source provides (commonly 48,000 Hz from broadcast AAC). The resulting VOC file will be uncompressed, so file size is determined entirely by duration, sample rate, and bit depth — a 1-minute mono 8-bit 22,050 Hz VOC file occupies roughly 1.3 MB. TS files with FLAC audio tracks are a rare but possible lossless source; even in that case, the pcm_u8 output will still represent a significant quality reduction due to 8-bit depth.