The app will find the file incomprehensible and will tell you that the file is corrupted or in a format the app can’t understand.
An app that works with raw next (Windows’ Editor or notepad++ or any IDE) will try to parse the binary data as text and fail miserably, showing you lots of undecodable-unicode characters.
Example:
%.š/BûT¹Ò;lŠ^œ{åúvž’Û X“—دa%“9HúU”¿ú¦¥N̉ČԿ†«dd’º•©“ÜÈê*è9$mÕ lfN‹„‘ª$bÿû°@§ gÂqâ`tŒøn<cm-‰Çˆmð3¡|ñ°k§û–ÿîo<©ªxgTZ¯óT†"x¦1Q®ÔÚóI# 3édgþ™>´dʶÌþB…o™ÜË7bMûö”]«ê|=®©w„Ïɳ²NdÅh˜Ñ#´¦ïÕ®ºAd`‹®«R²•]‡ÐÏEpäX 0PÛnE”Ø΋şçÒñD]îbwNðèB$¤“nnzráiqÖ›XåÄvØÉË\ø\¦P¼¶Xæ‰Â6…”ææ†?äÖåœ:m|?B3C+dW»f†`Ê$Lˆmìóz¯xK>‘)ƒÜÉTݨ@‘Š£Ð:¨õ¹|!„DQC#£öªJ¼×u›³ÕÒ©˜gV"!V«;áäi³EJ…3;zã[±0&ËsÖ_Ë·³‡ó8MaTô”ÖBïKßïùl4zHJE’N¢ìo™iÒg$½›—U.ºtÉW›SXGÓÐŒ§N¢–L¨YþïZOPNìÌÙŸN ŽŠióyÄ,QÍfÙ¬
Imagine you have a book that’s written in Korean. If you gave it to me and asked me to read it out loud, I wouldn’t be able to make sense out of it. If you gave it to a Korean person, however, they could read it perfectly fine.
The book itself hasn’t changed — just the person reading the book. And that person has a different set of skills (or instructions, if you will).
I feel like you want to but binary data into text. You may be interested in base64, or base32 for easier human processing.
Example of short low bitrate Opus audio in base64:
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
Is that what you are looking for?
What do you even mean by that?
The text program obviously can’t process and play the audio, it will try to open the file as if it contains text.
But it’s not like opening the file destroys it. You can still just close the text program, and then open the file using a suitable media program instead.
Here’s the thing: Let’s say your text editor interprets the file as ASCII.
Several characters in the ASCII table aren’t printable. The first 32 characters in the table are control characters, so they don’t get displayed on screen as text you could copy and paste. So if you opened an audio file in a text editor as an ASCII file, copied the text, pasted it in another text field, then saved that file, any bytes that were between 0 and 32 decimal would be missing.
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz is right. I’ll interpret your question as “can I send this to someone and they will be able to play it” – then the answer is yes. You can take a binary file like mp4, pretend it’s text like I did above, and send it via chat or a lemmy post. The recipient will need to copy that text, enter it in, for instance, notepad++ and save the file on their disk. Renaming the file from the-text.txt to the-text.mp4 should be sufficient for any audio player to pick the file up and play it.
Edit: doesn’t actually work
Not entirely true. There are bits in binary files that cannot be rendered correctly by text editors. In fact, if a text editor cannot read a bit, it might omit it or substitute it with a generic placeholder. Instead, what you would do is encode the file into a text format and the transmit it to somebody, who would then decode the text back into its original file format.
This is how email attachments and uploading/downloading files from the web work. Usually that text format is called base64. In email attachments, they go one step further and typically limit the encoded data to fixed length lines called chunks.
But yeah, sending raw binary data as text requires special formatting first. Opening it up in a text editor and copying and pasting is not enough.