Can't Listen to WAV Files on Your Droid? Here's a Solution
Jun
16
2010
Can't Listen to WAV Files on Your Droid? Here's a Solution Comments: 11
This blog is by Nicole, a member of the marketing team here at Junction Networks.
One of the convenient features OnSIP provides is voicemail-to-email. As an OnSIP user, you no longer need to dial your own phone number, input your pin, and listen to voicemails. This old process can be tedious. Instead, you can listen to .WAV voicemail attachments wherever you check your email: home laptop, work computer, cell phone... But, if you're an Android user, which I am, you may have discovered that listening to .WAV files is an impossibility. Ack.
This Seems to be a Known Issue in Droids
There is a long Google forum wherein several other users (including those who specifically want to check voicemails in their email) complain they can't listen to .WAV files; instead, they get an error message. I would venture to guess that Android will fix this at some point; but, in the mean time, I want to listen to my voicemails from my HTC Droid email!
At first, I thought about nicely asking our Engineering team to offer mp4 versions as well. However, that would add another to-do to our list of other cool stuff coming down the pike, when this particular problem will likely dissolve someday. So, I looked into several apps that had promise for playing .WAV files, and I didn't find one that worked. What I did find is a third party work-around:
PhoneConvert.com offers a free service for converting .WAV files to mp4 files via email. I successfully set up an auto-forwarding process to listen to my voicemail attachments on my droid. Before I tell you how to do it, please take note that this is a third-party service; we are not responsible for their process nor privacy policy. Please read up on the service before you decide if it's right for you.
Here's a Third Party Work-Around
- Go to PhoneConvert.com and follow the sign up process for a free account.
- Login to PhoneConvert.com and ensure that your "Send-To" email address(es) are where you'd like your mp4 voicemails sent.
- Check the confirmation email that PhoneConvert sent you In the email, PhoneConvert specifies your unique email address. It will look something like Name@iphoneconvert.com. Copy the email address.
- Login to my.OnSIP and click on the Settings symbol (upper right corner). Click on Call Features and replace your email address with your unique Phoneconvert email address. Click Save.
After you have set this up, your voicemails will be sent as mp4 attachments from PhoneConvert. You can also login to PhoneConvert Settings and change various preferences, including voicemail attachment naming conventions, email subject, and even attachment file format (You can change to mp3 for in-line listening in GMail). Also, check out their donation settings to decrease any delay time in conversion, though I personally found it to be just a few minutes.
droid wav files
There is an app in the market called remote wave that allows for playing the voice mails directly on the phone without going through the forwarding stuff.
Can you provide more info?
Initially, I looked around but didn't find one. I'd be interested in seeing it and trying it out. Can you post what it's called? Thanks!
excellent app
remote wave app works excellent, thanks for the heads up
How about just fixing this...
Thanks for posting a workaround. However, a workaround is not a replacement for a fix. I have been an onSIP user since Nov 2007 and an Android user since Nov 2009. And as soon as I jumped from WinMo to Android, I was hit by this lack of WAV file support. In the interest of being fair, I held off on making any support requests to change the default format of voicemails (or to provide format options) hoping that the problem would be recognized and addressed by onSIP. After waiting many months, I finally requested this feature. I have sent multiple requests inquiring about this issue and when I actually get a response, it is the same response I get for all feature requests, "we are working on it". (I have been asking for some kind of incoming call/dest extension identification since 2007 but that is a whole another thing). Now that Android sales have officially past iPhone sales (and by extension WinMO) can you please fix this issue? gigaom.com/2010/08/02/android-sales-overtake-iphone-in-the-u-s/
Re: How about just fixing this...
Hi Anne,
First off, thank you for being a long time OnSIP customer.
We pride ourselves on trying to do our best to accommodate as many of the customer support requests that we can handle in the engineering department, so I apologize that this is an annoyance for you and many others (myself included - I use a Nexus One). The problem here is that our file format is not what the problem is. We are using a common WAV file format that just isn't supported by Android. This mean the real fix will come when Android adds support for this popular WAV codec. Please see this bug report thread in the android issue tracker for a long list of people with the exact same problem. As an Android phone user myself however, I understand that you are frustrated and not interested in where the fault lies, you just wish it to work.
Here's where the problem lies for us. If we "fix" it by changing our WAV file format, all of our voicemail recordings for all users instantly becoming MUCH larger, because we will be using a less efficient codec. To us, this is not a fix, this actually degrades the service for the majority of users while fixing a single problem for a minority of users and that is unacceptable to us.
The solution you are told that is being worked on is really a major upgrade to the entire voicemail system. The scope of this project is not one to be rushed and requires much thought and even more work. We are still not near the completion of it, nor are we close enough to give any kind of delivery date.
So please know that we have not been ignoring this issue. It has garnered much thought and unfortunately the current solution is not ideal, however we really believe that it is the best decision for largest amount of people. We do apologize for the inconvenience to all Android users out there, but our hands really are tied on this for the short term. In all honesty the best solution for the time being is to follow the advice in this workaround.
I hope you find this answer acceptable and you continue to be a valued customer.
---
Erick J
Junction Networks Engineer
wav to mp3
I setup an email responder service that auto converts wav files to mp3 without any setup or registration at droidstory.com
Just follow the instructions here: http://droidstory.com/wav2mp3/
wav and gsm directly on the phone
For those who do not want to send their voicemail through a third party, there is an app called WavPlayer in the Android Market for only 99 cents that lets you play the files directly on the phone.
You can get more info here: http://tinyurl.com/dkro2010
Thanks for the suggestion
I've read this is working on Evo, not the Froyo OS version for android. I'll have to check it out. Thanks again
you heard wrong
It works on froyo 2.2 just fine
Remote Wave works great!
I had the same problem on my Droid Charge. It won't play .wav files which is how I get my messages from my Magic Jack account. Installed Remote Wave and problem solved. Simply installed it from Android Market and when I clicked on the .wav attachment it gives me the option to open with Remote Wave and it plays, clear and simple. Thank you!!!
Audio on Android
My good friend is having issues listening to audio that's being streamed from an Internet site (like Pitchfoirk, NPR, Sterogum, etc.) on her Android. I've looked online for any help but "streaming for Android" only brings up apps and fixes for streaming your own media from your PC to your device- not when trying simply to listen to a streamed song or album from a site when you don't have the music downloaded.
I'd like to help her out- any ideas on what we can check or try?
Thanks.