soxformat(7)


NAME

   SoX - Sound eXchange, the Swiss Army knife of audio manipulation

DESCRIPTION

   This  manual  describes  SoX  supported  file  formats and audio device
   types; the SoX manual set starts with sox(1).

   Format types that can SoX can determine by  a  filename  extension  are
   listed  with  their  names  preceded  by  a dot.  Format types that are
   optionally built into SoX are marked `(optional)'.

   Format types that can be handled by an external library via an optional
   pseudo  file  type (currently sndfile or ffmpeg) are marked e.g. `(also
   with -t sndfile)'.  This might be  useful  if  you  have  a  file  that
   doesn't work with SoX's default format readers and writers, and there's
   an external reader or writer for that format.

   To see if SoX has support for an optional format or device,  enter  sox
   -h and look for its name under the list: `AUDIO FILE FORMATS' or `AUDIO
   DEVICE DRIVERS'.

   SOX FORMATS & DEVICE DRIVERS
   .raw (also with -t sndfile), .f32, .f64, .s8, .s16, .s24, .s32,
   .u8, .u16, .u24, .u32, .ul, .al, .lu, .la
          Raw (headerless) audio files.  For raw, the sample rate and  the
          data  encoding  must be given using command-line format options;
          for the other listed types, the sample  rate  defaults  to  8kHz
          (but may be overridden), and the data encoding is defined by the
          given suffix.  Thus f32 and f64 indicate files encoded as 32 and
          64-bit  (IEEE  single  and  double precision) floating point PCM
          respectively; s8, s16, s24, and s32  indicate  8,  16,  24,  and
          32-bit  signed  integer  PCM respectively; u8, u16, u24, and u32
          indicate  8,  16,  24,   and   32-bit   unsigned   integer   PCM
          respectively; ul indicates `μ-law' (8-bit), al indicates `A-law'
          (8-bit), and lu and la are inverse bit order `μ-law' and inverse
          bit order `A-law' respectively.  For all raw formats, the number
          of channels defaults to 1 (but may be overridden).

          Headerless audio files on a SPARC computer are likely to  be  of
          format  ul;  on a Mac, they're likely to be u8 but with a sample
          rate of 11025 or 22050 Hz.

          See .ima and .vox for raw ADPCM formats, and .cdda  for  raw  CD
          digital audio.

   .f4, .f8, .s1, .s2, .s3, .s4,
   .u1, .u2, .u3, .u4, .sb, .sw, .sl, .ub, .uw
          Deprecated aliases for f32, f64, s8, s16, s24, s32,
          u8, u16, u24, u32, s8, s16, s32, u8, and u16 respectively.

   .8svx (also with -t sndfile)
          Amiga 8SVX musical instrument description format.

   .aiff, .aif (also with -t sndfile)
          AIFF  files  as  used on old Apple Macs, Apple IIc/IIgs and SGI.
          SoX's AIFF support does not include multiple  audio  chunks,  or
          the  8SVX musical instrument description format.  AIFF files are
          multimedia archives and can  have  multiple  audio  and  picture
          chunks  -  you  may  need a separate archiver to work with them.
          With Mac OS X, AIFF has been superseded by CAF.

   .aiffc, .aifc (also with -t sndfile)
          AIFF-C is a format based on  AIFF  that  was  created  to  allow
          handling  compressed  audio.   It  can also handle little endian
          uncompressed linear data that  is  often  referred  to  as  sowt
          encoding.   This  encoding  has  also  become the defacto format
          produced by modern Macs as  well  as  iTunes  on  any  platform.
          AIFF-C  files  produced by other applications typically have the
          file extension .aif and require looking at its header to  detect
          the  true  format.   The sowt encoding is the only encoding that
          SoX can handle with this format.

          AIFF-C is defined in DAVIC 1.4 Part 9 Annex B.  This  format  is
          referred from ARIB STD-B24, which is specified for Japanese data
          broadcasting.  Any private chunks are not supported.

   alsa (optional)
          Advanced Linux Sound Architecture device driver;  supports  both
          playing  and  recording audio.  ALSA is only used in Linux-based
          operating systems, though these often support OSS (see below) as
          well.  Examples:
               sox infile -t alsa
               sox infile -t alsa default
               sox infile -t alsa plughw:0,0
               sox -2 -t alsa hw:1 outfile
          See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.

   .amb   Ambisonic  B-Format: a specialisation of .wav with between 3 and
          16 channels of audio for use with  an  Ambisonic  decoder.   See
          http://www.ambisonia.com/Members/mleese/file-format-for-b-format
          for details.  It is up to the user to get the channels  together
          in the right order and at the correct amplitude.

   .amr-nb (optional)
          Adaptive  Multi  Rate - Narrow Band speech codec; a lossy format
          used in 3rd generation mobile telephony and defined in  3GPP  TS
          26.071 et al.

          AMR-NB  audio  has  a  fixed sampling rate of 8 kHz and supports
          encoding to the following  bit-rates  (as  selected  by  the  -C
          option):  0  = 4.75 kbit/s, 1 = 5.15 kbit/s, 2 = 5.9 kbit/s, 3 =
          6.7 kbit/s, 4 = 7.4 kbit/s 5 = 7.95 kbit/s, 6 = 10.2 kbit/s, 7 =
          12.2 kbit/s.

   .amr-wb (optional)
          Adaptive  Multi  Rate  -  Wide Band speech codec; a lossy format
          used in 3rd generation mobile telephony and defined in  3GPP  TS
          26.171 et al.

          AMR-WB  audio  has  a fixed sampling rate of 16 kHz and supports
          encoding to the following  bit-rates  (as  selected  by  the  -C
          option):  0 = 6.6 kbit/s, 1 = 8.85 kbit/s, 2 = 12.65 kbit/s, 3 =
          14.25 kbit/s, 4 = 15.85 kbit/s 5  =  18.25  kbit/s,  6  =  19.85
          kbit/s, 7 = 23.05 kbit/s, 8 = 23.85 kbit/s.

   ao (optional)
          Xiph.org's  Audio  Output  device driver; works only for playing
          audio.  It supports a wide range of devices and sound systems  -
          see  its  documentation  for the full range.  For the most part,
          SoX's use of libao cannot be configured directly; instead, libao
          configuration files must be used.

          The  filename  specified is used to determine which libao plugin
          to use.  Normally, you should specify `default' as the filename.
          If  that  doesn't give the desired behavior then you can specify
          the short name for a given plugin (such as pulse for pulse audio
          plugin).  Examples:
               sox infile -t ao
               sox infile -t ao default
               sox infile -t ao pulse
          See also play(1) and sox(1) -d.

   .au, .snd (also with -t sndfile)
          Sun Microsystems AU files.  There are many types of AU file; DEC
          has invented its own with a  different  magic  number  and  byte
          order.   To  write a DEC file, use the -L option with the output
          file options.

          Some .au files are known to have invalid AU headers;  these  are
          probably  original Sun μ-law 8000 Hz files and can be dealt with
          using the .ul format (see below).

          It is possible to override AU file header information  with  the
          -r  and  -c  options,  in which case SoX will issue a warning to
          that effect.

   .avr   Audio Visual Research format; used by  a  number  of  commercial
          packages on the Mac.

   .caf (optional)
          Apple's Core Audio File format.

   .cdda, .cdr
          `Red Book' Compact Disc Digital Audio (raw audio).  CDDA has two
          audio  channels  formatted  as  16-bit  signed   integers   (big
          endian)at  a  sample  rate  of 44.1 kHz.  The number of (stereo)
          samples in each CDDA track is always a multiple of 588.

   coreaudio (optional)
          Mac OSX CoreAudio  device  driver:  supports  both  playing  and
          recording  audio.   If a filename is not specific or if the name
          is "default" then the default audio  device  is  selected.   Any
          other  name will be used to select a specific device.  The valid
          names can be seen in the System Preferences->Sound menu and then
          under the Output and Input tabs.

          Examples:
               sox infile -t coreaudio
               sox infile -t coreaudio default
               sox infile -t coreaudio "Internal Speakers"
          See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.

   .cvsd, .cvs
          Continuously  Variable  Slope  Delta  modulation.   A headerless
          format used to compress speech audio for  applications  such  as
          voice  mail.   This  format  is sometimes used with bit-reversed
          samples - the -X format option can be used to set the bit-order.

   .cvu   Continuously Variable Slope Delta modulation (unfiltered).  This
          is an alternative handler for CVSD that is unfiltered but can be
          used with any bit-rate.  E.g.
               sox infile outfile.cvu rate 28k
               play -r 28k outfile.cvu sinc -3.4k

   .dat   Text Data files.  These files contain a  textual  representation
          of  the  sample  data.   There is one line at the beginning that
          contains the sample rate, and one line that contains the  number
          of  channels.  Subsequent lines contain two or more numeric data
          intems: the time since the beginning of the first sample and the
          sample value for each channel.

          Values  are normalized so that the maximum and minimum are 1 and
          -1.  This file format can be  used  to  create  data  files  for
          external  programs such as FFT analysers or graph routines.  SoX
          can also convert a file in this format  back  into  one  of  the
          other file formats.

          Example containing only 2 stereo samples of silence:

              ; Sample Rate 8012
              ; Channels 2
                          0   0    0
              0.00012481278   0    0

   .dvms, .vms
          Used  in  Germany  to  compress  speech audio for voice mail.  A
          self-describing variant of cvsd.

   .fap (optional)
          See .paf.

   ffmpeg (optional)
          This is a pseudo-type that forces ffmpeg to be used. The  actual
          file  type  is  deduced from the file name (it cannot be used on
          stdio).  It can read a wide range of audio  files,  not  all  of
          which  are  documented  here,  and  also the audio track of many
          video files (including AVI, WMV and MPEG). At present  only  the
          first audio track of a file can be read.

   .flac (optional; also with -t sndfile)
          Xiph.org's  Free Lossless Audio CODEC compressed audio.  FLAC is
          an open, patent-free CODEC designed for compressing  music.   It
          is  similar  to  MP3  and Ogg Vorbis, but lossless, meaning that
          audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality.

          SoX can read native FLAC files (.flac) but not  Ogg  FLAC  files
          (.ogg).  [But see .ogg below for information relating to support
          for Ogg Vorbis files.]

          SoX can write native FLAC files according to a given or  default
          compression level.  8 is the default compression level and gives
          the best (but slowest)  compression;  0  gives  the  least  (but
          fastest)  compression.   The compression level is selected using
          the -C option [see sox(1)] with a whole number from 0 to 8.

   .fssd  An alias for the .u8 format.

   .gsrt  Grandstream  ring-tone  files.   Whilst  this  file  format  can
          contain  A-Law,  μ-law, GSM, G.722, G.723, G.726, G.728, or iLBC
          encoded audio, SoX supports reading and writing only  A-Law  and
          μ-law.  E.g.
             sox music.wav -t gsrt ring.bin
             play ring.bin

   .gsm (optional; also with -t sndfile)
          GSM   06.10  Lossy  Speech  Compression.   A  lossy  format  for
          compressing speech which is used  in  the  Global  Standard  for
          Mobile  telecommunications  (GSM).   It's  good for its purpose,
          shrinking audio data size, but it will introduce lots  of  noise
          when a given audio signal is encoded and decoded multiple times.
          This format is used by some  voice  mail  applications.   It  is
          rather CPU intensive.

   .hcom  Macintosh  HCOM  files.   These  are Mac FSSD files with Huffman
          compression.

   .htk   Single channel 16-bit PCM format used  by  HTK,  a  toolkit  for
          building Hidden Markov Model speech processing tools.

   .ircam (also with -t sndfile)
          Another name for .sf.

   .ima (also with -t sndfile)
          A  headerless  file  of  IMA  ADPCM audio data. IMA ADPCM claims
          16-bit precision packed into only 4 bits, but in fact sounds  no
          better than .vox.

   .lpc, .lpc10
          LPC-10  is  a  compression  scheme  for  speech developed in the
          United  States.   See   http://www.arl.wustl.edu/~jaf/lpc/   for
          details.   There   is   no  associated  file  format,  so  SoX's
          implementation is headerless.

   .mat, .mat4, .mat5 (optional)
          Matlab 4.2/5.0 (respectively GNU Octave 2.0/2.1) format (.mat is
          the same as .mat4).

   .m3u   A  playlist  format;  contains  a  list of audio files.  SoX can
          read, but not write this file format.  See [1]  for  details  of
          this format.

   .maud  An  IFF-conforming audio file type, registered by MS MacroSystem
          Computer GmbH, published along with the `Toccata' sound-card  on
          the  Amiga.   Allows  8bit linear, 16bit linear, A-Law, μ-law in
          mono and stereo.

   .mp3, .mp2 (optional read, optional write)
          MP3 compressed audio; MP3 (MPEG  Layer  3)  is  a  part  of  the
          patent-encumbered   MPEG   standards   for   audio   and   video
          compression.  It is a lossy  compression  format  that  achieves
          good compression rates with little quality loss.

          Because  MP3  is  patented,  SoX  cannot be distributed with MP3
          support without incurring the patent holder's fees.   Users  who
          require  SoX  with  MP3 support must currently compile and build
          SoX with the MP3 libraries (LAME & MAD) from source code, or, in
          some cases, obtain pre-built dynamically loadable libraries.

          When  reading  MP3  files,  up to 28 bits of precision is stored
          although only 16 bits is reported to user.   This  is  to  allow
          default  behavior  of  writing  16 bit output files.  A user can
          specify a higher  precision  for  the  output  file  to  prevent
          lossing this extra information.  MP3 output files will use up to
          24 bits of precision while encoding.

          MP3 compression parameters can be selected using SoX's -C option
          as follows (note that the current syntax is subject to change):

          The  primary  parameter  to the LAME encoder is the bit rate. If
          the value of the -C value is a positive integer, it's  taken  as
          the bitrate in kbps (e.g. if you specify 128, it uses 128 kbps).

          The  second  most  important  parameter  is  probably  "quality"
          (really performance), which allows balancing encoding speed  vs.
          quality.  In LAME, 0 specifies highest quality but is very slow,
          while 9 selects poor quality, but is fast. (5 is the default and
          2 is recommended as a good trade-off for high quality encodes.)

          Because  the -C value is a float, the fractional part is used to
          select quality. 128.2 selects 128 kbps encoding with  a  quality
          of  2.  There  is one problem with this approach. We need 128 to
          specify 128 kbps encoding with default quality, so 0  means  use
          default.  Instead  of  0 you have to use .01 (or .99) to specify
          the highest quality (128.01 or 128.99).

          LAME uses bitrate to specify  a  constant  bitrate,  but  higher
          quality  can  be  achieved  using  Variable  Bit Rate (VBR). VBR
          quality (really size) is selected using a number from  0  to  9.
          Use  a  value  of  0  for  high quality, larger files, and 9 for
          smaller files of lower quality. 4 is the default.

          In order to squeeze the selection of VBR into the the  -C  value
          float  we  use negative numbers to select VRR. -4.2 would select
          default VBR encoding  (size)  with  high  quality  (speed).  One
          special  case  is 0, which is a valid VBR encoding parameter but
          not a valid bitrate.  Compression value of 0 is  always  treated
          as a high quality vbr, as a result both -0.2 and 0.2 are treated
          as highest quality VBR (size) and high quality (speed).

          See also Ogg Vorbis for a similar format.

   .mp4, .m4a (optional)
          MP4 compressed  audio.   MP3  (MPEG  4)  is  part  of  the  MPEG
          standards  for  audio  and  video compression.  See mp3 for more
          information.

   .nist (also with -t sndfile)
          See .sph.

   .ogg, .vorbis (optional)
          Xiph.org's Ogg Vorbis compressed  audio;  an  open,  patent-free
          CODEC  designed  for  music  and streaming audio.  It is a lossy
          compression format (similar to MP3, VQF  &  AAC)  that  achieves
          good compression rates with a minimum amount of quality loss.

          SoX  can decode all types of Ogg Vorbis files, and can encode at
          different compression levels/qualities given as a number from -1
          (highest  compression/lowest quality) to 10 (lowest compression,
          highest quality).  By default the encoding quality  level  is  3
          (which  gives  an encoded rate of approx. 112kbps), but this can
          be changed using the -C option (see above) with a number from -1
          to   10;  fractional  numbers  (e.g.   3.6)  are  also  allowed.
          Decoding is somewhat CPU intensive  and  encoding  is  very  CPU
          intensive.

          See also .mp3 for a similar format.

   oss (optional)
          Open  Sound System /dev/dsp device driver; supports both playing
          and recording audio.  OSS  support  is  available  in  Unix-like
          operating  systems,  sometimes  together  with alternative sound
          systems (such as ALSA).  Examples:
               sox infile -t oss
               sox infile -t oss /dev/dsp
               sox -2 -t oss /dev/dsp outfile
          See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.

   .paf, .fap (optional)
          Ensoniq PARIS file format (big and little-endian respectively).

   .pls   A playlist format; contains a list  of  audio  files.   SoX  can
          read,  but  not  write this file format.  See [2] for details of
          this format.

          Note: SoX support for SHOUTcast PLS relies  on  wget(1)  and  is
          only  partially  supported:  it's necessary to specify the audio
          type manually, e.g.
               play -t mp3 "http://a.server/pls?rn=265&file=filename.pls"
          and SoX does not know about alternative  servers  -  hit  Ctrl-C
          twice in quick succession to quit.

   .prc   Psion  Record.  Used  in  Psion  EPOC  PDAs  (Series 5, Revo and
          similar) for System alarms and recordings made by  the  built-in
          Record  application.  When writing, SoX defaults to A-law, which
          is recommended; if you must use ADPCM, then use the  -i  switch.
          The  sound  quality is poor because Psion Record seems to insist
          on frames of 800 samples or fewer, so that the ADPCM  CODEC  has
          to  be  reset  at  every  800  frames, which causes the sound to
          glitch every tenth of a second.

   pulseaudio (optional)
          PulseAudio driver; supports both playing and recording of audio.
          PulseAudio  is  a  cross  platform networked sound server.  If a
          file  name  is  specified  with  this  driver,  it  is  ignored.
          Examples:
               sox infile -t pulseaudio
               sox infile -t pulseaudio default
          See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.

   .pvf (optional)
          Portable Voice Format.

   .sd2 (optional)
          Sound Designer 2 format.

   .sds (optional)
          MIDI Sample Dump Standard.

   .sf (also with -t sndfile)
          IRCAM    SDIF    (Institut    de   Recherche   et   Coordination
          Acoustique/Musique Sound Description Interchange  Format).  Used
          by  academic  music software such as the CSound package, and the
          MixView sound sample editor.

   .sln   Asterisk  PBX  `signed  linear'  8khz,  16-bit  signed  integer,
          little-endian raw format.

   .sph, .nist (also with -t sndfile)
          SPHERE  (SPeech  HEader  Resources)  is a file format defined by
          NIST (National Institute of Standards  and  Technology)  and  is
          used  with  speech  audio.   SoX  can read these files when they
          contain  μ-law  and  PCM  data.   It  will  ignore  any   header
          information  that  says  the  data  is  compressed using shorten
          compression and will treat the data  as  either  μ-law  or  PCM.
          This  will  allow SoX and the command line shorten program to be
          run together using pipes to encompasses the data and  then  pass
          the result to SoX for processing.

   .smp   Turtle Beach SampleVision files.  SMP files are for use with the
          PC-DOS package SampleVision by  Turtle  Beach  Softworks.   This
          package  is  for  communication  to  several MIDI samplers.  All
          sample rates are supported by the package, although not all  are
          supported by the samplers themselves.  Currently loop points are
          ignored.

   .snd   See .au, .sndr and .sndt.

   sndfile (optional)
          This is a pseudo-type that forces libsndfile  to  be  used.  For
          writing  files,  the  actual  file  type  is then taken from the
          output file name; for reading them, it is deduced from the file.

   sndio (optional)
          OpenBSD audio device driver; supports both playing and recording
          audio.
               sox infile -t sndio
          See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.

   .sndr  Sounder  files.   An  MS-DOS/Windows format from the early '90s.
          Sounder files usually have the extension `.SND'.

   .sndt  SoundTool files.  An MS-DOS/Windows format from the early  '90s.
          SoundTool files usually have the extension `.SND'.

   .sou   An alias for the .u8 raw format.

   .sox   SoX's  native  uncompressed PCM format, intended for storing (or
          piping) audio at intermediate processing  points  (i.e.  between
          SoX  invocations).   It has much in common with the popular WAV,
          AIFF, and AU uncompressed PCM formats,  but  has  the  following
          specific  characteristics:  the PCM samples are always stored as
          32 bit signed integers, the samples are stored (by  default)  as
          `native  endian',  and  the  number  of  samples  in the file is
          recorded as a 64-bit integer.  Comments are also supported.

          See `Special Filenames' in sox(1) for examples of using the .sox
          format with `pipes'.

   sunau (optional)
          Sun   /dev/audio   device  driver;  supports  both  playing  and
          recording audio.  For example:
               sox infile -t sunau /dev/audio
          or
               sox infile -t sunau -U -c 1 /dev/audio
          for older sun equipment.

          See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.

   .txw   Yamaha TX-16W sampler.  A file format  from  a  Yamaha  sampling
          keyboard  which  wrote  IBM-PC  format  3.5"  floppies.  Handles
          reading of files which do not have the sample rate field set  to
          one  of  the  expected  by  looking  at  some other bytes in the
          attack/loop length fields,  and  defaulting  to  33 kHz  if  the
          sample rate is still unknown.

   .vms   See .dvms.

   .voc (also with -t sndfile)
          Sound  Blaster  VOC files.  VOC files are multi-part and contain
          silence parts, looping, and different sample rates for different
          chunks.   On  input, the silence parts are filled out, loops are
          rejected, and sample data with a new sample  rate  is  rejected.
          Silence with a different sample rate is generated appropriately.
          On output, silence is not detected, nor  are  impossible  sample
          rates.   SoX  supports  reading (but not writing) VOC files with
          multiple  blocks,  and  files  containing  μ-law,   A-law,   and
          2/3/4-bit ADPCM samples.

   .vorbis
          See .ogg.

   .vox (also with -t sndfile)
          A  headerless  file  of  Dialogic/OKI  ADPCM audio data commonly
          comes with the extension  .vox.   This  ADPCM  data  has  12-bit
          precision packed into only 4-bits.

          Note:  some  early  Dialogic  hardware does not always reset the
          ADPCM encoder at the start of each vox file.  This can result in
          clipping and/or DC offset problems when it comes to decoding the
          audio.  Whilst little can be  done  about  the  clipping,  a  DC
          offset  can  be  removed  by passing the decoded audio through a
          high-pass filter, e.g.:
               sox input.vox output.wav highpass 10

   .w64 (optional)
          Sonic Foundry's 64-bit RIFF/WAV format.

   .wav (also with -t sndfile)
          Microsoft .WAV RIFF files.  This is the native audio file format
          of Windows, and widely used for uncompressed audio.

          Normally  .wav  files  have  all formatting information in their
          headers, and so do not need any format options specified for  an
          input file.  If any are, they will override the file header, and
          you will be warned to this effect.  You had better know what you
          are doing! Output format options will cause a format conversion,
          and the .wav will written appropriately.

          SoX can read and write linear PCM, floating point, μ-law, A-law,
          MS ADPCM, and IMA (or DVI) ADPCM encoded samples.  WAV files can
          also contain audio encoded in many  other  ways  (not  currently
          supported  with  SoX)  e.g.  MP3;  in some cases such a file can
          still be read by SoX by overriding the file type, e.g.
             play -t mp3 mp3-encoded.wav
          Big endian  versions  of  RIFF  files,  called  RIFX,  are  also
          supported.   To  write  a  RIFX file, use the -B option with the
          output file options.

   waveaudio (optional)
          MS-Windows native audio device driver.  Examples:
               sox infile -t waveaudio
               sox infile -t waveaudio default
               sox infile -t waveaudio 1
               sox infile -t waveaudio "High Definition Audio Device ("
          If the device name is omitted, -1, or default, then you get  the
          `Microsoft  Wave  Mapper'  device.   Wave  Mapper means `use the
          system default audio devices'.  You can control  what  `default'
          means via the OS Control Panel.

          If  the  device  name  given  is some other number, you get that
          audio device by index; so recording with device name 0 would get
          the first input device (perhaps the microphone), 1 would get the
          second (perhaps line in), etc.  Playback using 0  will  get  the
          first output device (usually the only audio device).

          If  the  device name given is something other than a number, SoX
          tries to match it (maximum 31 characters) against the  names  of
          the available devices.

          See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.

   .wavpcm
          A   non-standard,  but  widely  used,  variant  of  .wav.   Some
          applications cannot read a standard WAV  file  header  for  PCM-
          encoded  data with sample-size greater than 16-bits or with more
          than two channels, but can read a non-standard WAV  header.   It
          is  likely  that such applications will eventually be updated to
          support the standard header, but in  the  mean  time,  this  SoX
          format  can be used to create files with the non-standard header
          that should work with these applications.  (Note that  SoX  will
          automatically  detect  and  read WAV files with the non-standard
          header.)

          The most common use of this file-type is likely to be along  the
          following lines:
               sox infile.any -t wavpcm -s outfile.wav

   .wv (optional)
          WavPack  lossless audio compression.  Note that, when converting
          .wav to this format and back  again,  the  RIFF  header  is  not
          necessarily preserved losslessly (though the audio is).

   .wve (also with -t sndfile)
          Psion  8-bit  A-law.   Used  on  Psion  SIBO  PDAs (Series 3 and
          similar).  This format is deprecated in SoX, but  will  continue
          to be used in libsndfile.

   .xa    Maxis  XA  files.   These  are  16-bit ADPCM audio files used by
          Maxis games.  Writing .xa  files  is  currently  not  supported,
          although adding write support should not be very difficult.

   .xi (optional)
          Fasttracker 2 Extended Instrument format.

SEE ALSO

   sox(1), soxi(1), libsox(3), octave(1), wget(1)

   The SoX web page at http://sox.sourceforge.net
   SoX scripting examples at http://sox.sourceforge.net/Docs/Scripts

   References
   [1]    Wikipedia, M3U, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U

   [2]    Wikipedia, PLS, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLS_(file_format)

LICENSE

   Copyright 1998-2013 Chris Bagwell and SoX Contributors.
   Copyright 1991 Lance Norskog and Sundry Contributors.

AUTHORS

   Chris  Bagwell  (cbagwell@users.sourceforge.net).   Other  authors  and
   contributors are listed in the ChangeLog file that is distributed  with
   the source code.





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