1SoX(7)                          Sound eXchange                          SoX(7)
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NAME

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

9       This  manual  describes  SoX  supported  file  formats and audio device
10       types; the SoX manual set starts with sox(1).
11
12       Format types that can SoX can determine by  a  filename  extension  are
13       listed  with  their  names  preceded  by  a dot.  Format types that are
14       optionally built into SoX are marked `(optional)'.
15
16       Format types that can be handled by an external library via an optional
17       pseudo  file  type (currently sndfile or ffmpeg) are marked e.g. `(also
18       with -t sndfile)'.  This might be  useful  if  you  have  a  file  that
19       doesn't work with SoX's default format readers and writers, and there's
20       an external reader or writer for that format.
21
22       To see if SoX has support for an optional format or device,  enter  sox
23       -h and look for its name under the list: `AUDIO FILE FORMATS' or `AUDIO
24       DEVICE DRIVERS'.
25
26   SOX FORMATS & DEVICE DRIVERS
27       .raw (also with -t sndfile), .f32, .f64, .s8, .s16, .s24, .s32,
28       .u8, .u16, .u24, .u32, .ul, .al, .lu, .la
29              Raw (headerless) audio files.  For raw, the sample rate and  the
30              data  encoding  must be given using command-line format options;
31              for the other listed types, the sample  rate  defaults  to  8kHz
32              (but may be overridden), and the data encoding is defined by the
33              given suffix.  Thus f32 and f64 indicate files encoded as 32 and
34              64-bit  (IEEE  single  and  double precision) floating point PCM
35              respectively; s8, s16, s24, and s32  indicate  8,  16,  24,  and
36              32-bit  signed  integer  PCM respectively; u8, u16, u24, and u32
37              indicate 8, 16, 24, and  32-bit  unsigned  integer  PCM  respec‐
38              tively;  ul  indicates  `μ-law'  (8-bit),  al  indicates `A-law'
39              (8-bit), and lu and la are inverse bit order `μ-law' and inverse
40              bit order `A-law' respectively.  For all raw formats, the number
41              of channels defaults to 1 (but may be overridden).
42
43              Headerless audio files on a SPARC computer are likely to  be  of
44              format  ul;  on a Mac, they're likely to be u8 but with a sample
45              rate of 11025 or 22050 Hz.
46
47              See .ima and .vox for raw ADPCM formats, and .cdda  for  raw  CD
48              digital audio.
49
50       .f4, .f8, .s1, .s2, .s3, .s4,
51       .u1, .u2, .u3, .u4, .sb, .sw, .sl, .ub, .uw
52              Deprecated aliases for f32, f64, s8, s16, s24, s32,
53              u8, u16, u24, u32, s8, s16, s32, u8, and u16 respectively.
54
55       .8svx (also with -t sndfile)
56              Amiga 8SVX musical instrument description format.
57
58       .aiff, .aif (also with -t sndfile)
59              AIFF  files  as  used on old Apple Macs, Apple IIc/IIgs and SGI.
60              SoX's AIFF support does not include multiple  audio  chunks,  or
61              the  8SVX musical instrument description format.  AIFF files are
62              multimedia archives and can  have  multiple  audio  and  picture
63              chunks  -  you  may  need a separate archiver to work with them.
64              With Mac OS X, AIFF has been superseded by CAF.
65
66       .aiffc, .aifc (also with -t sndfile)
67              AIFF-C is a format based on AIFF that was created to allow  han‐
68              dling compressed audio.  It can also handle little endian uncom‐
69              pressed linear data that is often referred to as sowt  encoding.
70              This  encoding  has  also  become the defacto format produced by
71              modern Macs as well as iTunes on  any  platform.   AIFF-C  files
72              produced by other applications typically have the file extension
73              .aif and require looking at its header to detect the  true  for‐
74              mat.  The sowt encoding is the only encoding that SoX can handle
75              with this format.
76
77              AIFF-C is defined in DAVIC 1.4 Part 9 Annex B.  This  format  is
78              referred from ARIB STD-B24, which is specified for Japanese data
79              broadcasting.  Any private chunks are not supported.
80
81       alsa (optional)
82              Advanced Linux Sound Architecture device driver;  supports  both
83              playing  and  recording audio.  ALSA is only used in Linux-based
84              operating systems, though these often support OSS (see below) as
85              well.  Examples:
86                   sox infile -t alsa
87                   sox infile -t alsa default
88                   sox infile -t alsa plughw:0,0
89                   sox -2 -t alsa hw:1 outfile
90              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
91
92       .amb   Ambisonic  B-Format: a specialisation of .wav with between 3 and
93              16 channels of audio for use with  an  Ambisonic  decoder.   See
94              http://www.ambisonia.com/Members/mleese/file-format-for-b-format
95              for details.  It is up to the user to get the channels  together
96              in the right order and at the correct amplitude.
97
98       .amr-nb (optional)
99              Adaptive  Multi  Rate - Narrow Band speech codec; a lossy format
100              used in 3rd generation mobile telephony and defined in  3GPP  TS
101              26.071 et al.
102
103              AMR-NB  audio  has  a  fixed sampling rate of 8 kHz and supports
104              encoding to the following  bit-rates  (as  selected  by  the  -C
105              option):  0  = 4.75 kbit/s, 1 = 5.15 kbit/s, 2 = 5.9 kbit/s, 3 =
106              6.7 kbit/s, 4 = 7.4 kbit/s 5 = 7.95 kbit/s, 6 = 10.2 kbit/s, 7 =
107              12.2 kbit/s.
108
109       .amr-wb (optional)
110              Adaptive  Multi  Rate  -  Wide Band speech codec; a lossy format
111              used in 3rd generation mobile telephony and defined in  3GPP  TS
112              26.171 et al.
113
114              AMR-WB  audio  has  a fixed sampling rate of 16 kHz and supports
115              encoding to the following  bit-rates  (as  selected  by  the  -C
116              option):  0 = 6.6 kbit/s, 1 = 8.85 kbit/s, 2 = 12.65 kbit/s, 3 =
117              14.25 kbit/s, 4 = 15.85 kbit/s 5  =  18.25  kbit/s,  6  =  19.85
118              kbit/s, 7 = 23.05 kbit/s, 8 = 23.85 kbit/s.
119
120       ao (optional)
121              Xiph.org's  Audio  Output  device driver; works only for playing
122              audio.  It supports a wide range of devices and sound systems  -
123              see  its  documentation  for the full range.  For the most part,
124              SoX's use of libao cannot be configured directly; instead, libao
125              configuration files must be used.
126
127              The  filename  specified is used to determine which libao plugin
128              to use.  Normally, you should specify `default' as the filename.
129              If  that  doesn't give the desired behavior then you can specify
130              the short name for a given plugin (such as pulse for pulse audio
131              plugin).  Examples:
132                   sox infile -t ao
133                   sox infile -t ao default
134                   sox infile -t ao pulse
135              See also play(1) and sox(1) -d.
136
137       .au, .snd (also with -t sndfile)
138              Sun Microsystems AU files.  There are many types of AU file; DEC
139              has invented its own with a  different  magic  number  and  byte
140              order.   To  write a DEC file, use the -L option with the output
141              file options.
142
143              Some .au files are known to have invalid AU headers;  these  are
144              probably  original Sun μ-law 8000 Hz files and can be dealt with
145              using the .ul format (see below).
146
147              It is possible to override AU file header information  with  the
148              -r  and  -c  options,  in which case SoX will issue a warning to
149              that effect.
150
151       .avr   Audio Visual Research format; used by  a  number  of  commercial
152              packages on the Mac.
153
154       .caf (optional)
155              Apple's Core Audio File format.
156
157       .cdda, .cdr
158              `Red Book' Compact Disc Digital Audio (raw audio).  CDDA has two
159              audio  channels  formatted  as  16-bit  signed   integers   (big
160              endian)at  a  sample  rate  of 44.1 kHz.  The number of (stereo)
161              samples in each CDDA track is always a multiple of 588.
162
163       coreaudio (optional)
164              Mac OSX CoreAudio  device  driver:  supports  both  playing  and
165              recording  audio.   If a filename is not specific or if the name
166              is "default" then the default audio  device  is  selected.   Any
167              other  name will be used to select a specific device.  The valid
168              names can be seen in the System Preferences->Sound menu and then
169              under the Output and Input tabs.
170
171              Examples:
172                   sox infile -t coreaudio
173                   sox infile -t coreaudio default
174                   sox infile -t coreaudio "Internal Speakers"
175              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
176
177       .cvsd, .cvs
178              Continuously Variable Slope Delta modulation.  A headerless for‐
179              mat used to compress speech audio for applications such as voice
180              mail.  This format is sometimes used with bit-reversed samples -
181              the -X format option can be used to set the bit-order.
182
183       .cvu   Continuously Variable Slope Delta modulation (unfiltered).  This
184              is an alternative handler for CVSD that is unfiltered but can be
185              used with any bit-rate.  E.g.
186                   sox infile outfile.cvu rate 28k
187                   play -r 28k outfile.cvu sinc -3.4k
188
189       .dat   Text Data files.  These files contain a  textual  representation
190              of  the  sample  data.   There is one line at the beginning that
191              contains the sample rate.  Subsequent lines contain two  numeric
192              data items: the time since the beginning of the first sample and
193              the sample value.  Values are normalized so that the maximum and
194              minimum  are  1  and -1.  This file format can be used to create
195              data files for external programs such as FFT analysers or  graph
196              routines.   SoX can also convert a file in this format back into
197              one of the other file formats.
198
199       .dvms, .vms
200              Used in Germany to compress speech  audio  for  voice  mail.   A
201              self-describing variant of cvsd.
202
203       .fap (optional)
204              See .paf.
205
206       ffmpeg (optional)
207              This  is a pseudo-type that forces ffmpeg to be used. The actual
208              file type is deduced from the file name (it cannot  be  used  on
209              stdio).   It  can  read  a wide range of audio files, not all of
210              which are documented here, and also  the  audio  track  of  many
211              video  files  (including AVI, WMV and MPEG). At present only the
212              first audio track of a file can be read.
213
214       .flac (optional; also with -t sndfile)
215              Xiph.org's Free Lossless Audio CODEC compressed audio.  FLAC  is
216              an  open,  patent-free CODEC designed for compressing music.  It
217              is similar to MP3 and Ogg Vorbis,  but  lossless,  meaning  that
218              audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality.
219
220              SoX  can  read  native FLAC files (.flac) but not Ogg FLAC files
221              (.ogg).  [But see .ogg below for information relating to support
222              for Ogg Vorbis files.]
223
224              SoX  can write native FLAC files according to a given or default
225              compression level.  8 is the default compression level and gives
226              the  best  (but  slowest)  compression;  0  gives the least (but
227              fastest) compression.  The compression level is  selected  using
228              the -C option [see sox(1)] with a whole number from 0 to 8.
229
230       .fssd  An alias for the .u8 format.
231
232       .gsrt  Grandstream  ring-tone  files.  Whilst this file format can con‐
233              tain A-Law, μ-law, GSM, G.722,  G.723,  G.726,  G.728,  or  iLBC
234              encoded  audio,  SoX supports reading and writing only A-Law and
235              μ-law.  E.g.
236                 sox music.wav -t gsrt ring.bin
237                 play ring.bin
238
239       .gsm (optional; also with -t sndfile)
240              GSM 06.10 Lossy Speech Compression.  A  lossy  format  for  com‐
241              pressing  speech which is used in the Global Standard for Mobile
242              telecommunications (GSM).  It's good for its purpose,  shrinking
243              audio  data  size,  but  it  will introduce lots of noise when a
244              given audio signal is encoded and decoded multiple times.   This
245              format  is  used  by some voice mail applications.  It is rather
246              CPU intensive.
247
248       .hcom  Macintosh HCOM files.  These are Mac  FSSD  files  with  Huffman
249              compression.
250
251       .htk   Single  channel  16-bit  PCM  format  used by HTK, a toolkit for
252              building Hidden Markov Model speech processing tools.
253
254       .ircam (also with -t sndfile)
255              Another name for .sf.
256
257       .ima (also with -t sndfile)
258              A headerless file of IMA ADPCM  audio  data.  IMA  ADPCM  claims
259              16-bit  precision packed into only 4 bits, but in fact sounds no
260              better than .vox.
261
262       .lpc, .lpc10
263              LPC-10 is a compression  scheme  for  speech  developed  in  the
264              United   States.   See   http://www.arl.wustl.edu/~jaf/lpc/  for
265              details. There is no associated file format, so SoX's  implemen‐
266              tation is headerless.
267
268       .mat, .mat4, .mat5 (optional)
269              Matlab 4.2/5.0 (respectively GNU Octave 2.0/2.1) format (.mat is
270              the same as .mat4).
271
272       .m3u   A playlist format; contains a list  of  audio  files.   SoX  can
273              read,  but  not  write this file format.  See [1] for details of
274              this format.
275
276       .maud  An IFF-conforming audio file type, registered by MS  MacroSystem
277              Computer  GmbH, published along with the `Toccata' sound-card on
278              the Amiga.  Allows 8bit linear, 16bit linear,  A-Law,  μ-law  in
279              mono and stereo.
280
281       .mp3, .mp2 (optional read, optional write)
282              MP3  compressed  audio;  MP3  (MPEG  Layer  3)  is a part of the
283              patent-encumbered MPEG standards for audio  and  video  compres‐
284              sion.   It is a lossy compression format that achieves good com‐
285              pression rates with little quality loss.
286
287              Because MP3 is patented, SoX cannot be distributed with MP3 sup‐
288              port  without  incurring  the  patent  holder's fees.  Users who
289              require SoX with MP3 support must currently  compile  and  build
290              SoX with the MP3 libraries (LAME & MAD) from source code, or, in
291              some cases, obtain pre-built dynamically loadable libraries.
292
293              When reading MP3 files, up to 28 bits  of  precision  is  stored
294              although  only  16  bits  is reported to user.  This is to allow
295              default behavior of writing 16 bit output  files.   A  user  can
296              specify  a higher precision for the output file to prevent loss‐
297              ing this extra information.  MP3 output files will use up to  24
298              bits of precision while encoding.
299
300              MP3 compression parameters can be selected using SoX's -C option
301              as follows (note that the current syntax is subject to change):
302
303              The primary parameter to the LAME encoder is the  bit  rate.  If
304              the  value  of the -C value is a positive integer, it's taken as
305              the bitrate in kbps (e.g. if you specify 128, it uses 128 kbps).
306
307              The  second  most  important  parameter  is  probably  "quality"
308              (really  performance), which allows balancing encoding speed vs.
309              quality.  In LAME, 0 specifies highest quality but is very slow,
310              while 9 selects poor quality, but is fast. (5 is the default and
311              2 is recommended as a good trade-off for high quality encodes.)
312
313              Because the -C value is a float, the fractional part is used  to
314              select  quality.  128.2 selects 128 kbps encoding with a quality
315              of 2. There is one problem with this approach. We  need  128  to
316              specify  128  kbps encoding with default quality, so 0 means use
317              default. Instead of 0 you have to use .01 (or  .99)  to  specify
318              the highest quality (128.01 or 128.99).
319
320              LAME  uses  bitrate  to  specify  a constant bitrate, but higher
321              quality can be achieved using Variable Bit Rate (VBR). VBR qual‐
322              ity  (really size) is selected using a number from 0 to 9. Use a
323              value of 0 for high quality, larger files,  and  9  for  smaller
324              files of lower quality. 4 is the default.
325
326              In  order  to squeeze the selection of VBR into the the -C value
327              float we use negative numbers to select VRR. -4.2  would  select
328              default  VBR encoding (size) with high quality (speed). One spe‐
329              cial case is 0, which is a valid VBR encoding parameter but  not
330              a  valid bitrate.  Compression value of 0 is always treated as a
331              high quality vbr, as a result both -0.2 and 0.2 are  treated  as
332              highest quality VBR (size) and high quality (speed).
333
334              See also Ogg Vorbis for a similar format.
335
336       .mp4, .m4a (optional)
337              MP4  compressed  audio.   MP3 (MPEG 4) is part of the MPEG stan‐
338              dards for audio and video compression.  See mp3 for more  infor‐
339              mation.
340
341       .nist (also with -t sndfile)
342              See .sph.
343
344       .ogg, .vorbis (optional)
345              Xiph.org's  Ogg  Vorbis  compressed  audio; an open, patent-free
346              CODEC designed for music and streaming audio.   It  is  a  lossy
347              compression  format  (similar  to  MP3, VQF & AAC) that achieves
348              good compression rates with a minimum amount of quality loss.
349
350              SoX can decode all types of Ogg Vorbis files, and can encode  at
351              different compression levels/qualities given as a number from -1
352              (highest compression/lowest quality) to 10 (lowest  compression,
353              highest  quality).   By  default the encoding quality level is 3
354              (which gives an encoded rate of approx. 112kbps), but  this  can
355              be changed using the -C option (see above) with a number from -1
356              to 10; fractional numbers (e.g.  3.6) are also allowed.   Decod‐
357              ing  is  somewhat  CPU intensive and encoding is very CPU inten‐
358              sive.
359
360              See also .mp3 for a similar format.
361
362       oss (optional)
363              Open Sound System /dev/dsp device driver; supports both  playing
364              and  recording  audio.   OSS  support  is available in Unix-like
365              operating systems, sometimes  together  with  alternative  sound
366              systems (such as ALSA).  Examples:
367                   sox infile -t oss
368                   sox infile -t oss /dev/dsp
369                   sox -2 -t oss /dev/dsp outfile
370              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
371
372       .paf, .fap (optional)
373              Ensoniq PARIS file format (big and little-endian respectively).
374
375       .pls   A  playlist  format;  contains  a  list of audio files.  SoX can
376              read, but not write this file format.  See [2]  for  details  of
377              this format.
378
379              Note:  SoX  support  for  SHOUTcast PLS relies on wget(1) and is
380              only partially supported: it's necessary to  specify  the  audio
381              type manually, e.g.
382                   play -t mp3 "http://a.server/pls?rn=265&file=filename.pls"
383              and  SoX  does  not  know about alternative servers - hit Ctrl-C
384              twice in quick succession to quit.
385
386       .prc   Psion Record. Used in Psion EPOC PDAs (Series 5, Revo and  simi‐
387              lar)  for  System  alarms  and  recordings  made by the built-in
388              Record application.  When writing, SoX defaults to A-law,  which
389              is  recommended;  if you must use ADPCM, then use the -i switch.
390              The sound quality is poor because Psion Record seems  to  insist
391              on  frames  of 800 samples or fewer, so that the ADPCM CODEC has
392              to be reset at every 800  frames,  which  causes  the  sound  to
393              glitch every tenth of a second.
394
395       pulseaudio (optional)
396              PulseAudio driver; supports both playing and recording of audio.
397              PulseAudio is a cross platform networked  sound  server.   If  a
398              file  name  is specified with this driver, it is ignored.  Exam‐
399              ples:
400                   sox infile -t pulseaudio
401                   sox infile -t pulseaudio default
402              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
403
404       .pvf (optional)
405              Portable Voice Format.
406
407       .sd2 (optional)
408              Sound Designer 2 format.
409
410       .sds (optional)
411              MIDI Sample Dump Standard.
412
413       .sf (also with -t sndfile)
414              IRCAM  SDIF  (Institut  de  Recherche  et  Coordination   Acous‐
415              tique/Musique  Sound  Description  Interchange  Format). Used by
416              academic music software such as  the  CSound  package,  and  the
417              MixView sound sample editor.
418
419       .sph, .nist (also with -t sndfile)
420              SPHERE  (SPeech  HEader  Resources)  is a file format defined by
421              NIST (National Institute of Standards  and  Technology)  and  is
422              used with speech audio.  SoX can read these files when they con‐
423              tain μ-law and PCM data.  It will ignore any header  information
424              that  says  the data is compressed using shorten compression and
425              will treat the data as either μ-law or PCM.  This will allow SoX
426              and  the  command  line shorten program to be run together using
427              pipes to encompasses the data and then pass the  result  to  SoX
428              for processing.
429
430       .smp   Turtle Beach SampleVision files.  SMP files are for use with the
431              PC-DOS package SampleVision by  Turtle  Beach  Softworks.   This
432              package is for communication to several MIDI samplers.  All sam‐
433              ple rates are supported by the package,  although  not  all  are
434              supported by the samplers themselves.  Currently loop points are
435              ignored.
436
437       .snd   See .au, .sndr and .sndt.
438
439       sndfile (optional)
440              This is a pseudo-type that forces libsndfile  to  be  used.  For
441              writing  files, the actual file type is then taken from the out‐
442              put file name; for reading them, it is deduced from the file.
443
444       sndio (optional)
445              OpenBSD audio device driver; supports both playing and recording
446              audio.
447                   sox infile -t sndio
448              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
449
450       .sndr  Sounder  files.   An  MS-DOS/Windows format from the early '90s.
451              Sounder files usually have the extension `.SND'.
452
453       .sndt  SoundTool files.  An MS-DOS/Windows format from the early  '90s.
454              SoundTool files usually have the extension `.SND'.
455
456       .sou   An alias for the .u8 raw format.
457
458       .sox   SoX's  native  uncompressed PCM format, intended for storing (or
459              piping) audio at intermediate processing  points  (i.e.  between
460              SoX  invocations).   It has much in common with the popular WAV,
461              AIFF, and AU uncompressed PCM formats,  but  has  the  following
462              specific  characteristics:  the PCM samples are always stored as
463              32 bit signed integers, the samples are stored (by  default)  as
464              `native  endian',  and  the  number  of  samples  in the file is
465              recorded as a 64-bit integer.  Comments are also supported.
466
467              See `Special Filenames' in sox(1) for examples of using the .sox
468              format with `pipes'.
469
470       sunau (optional)
471              Sun  /dev/audio device driver; supports both playing and record‐
472              ing audio.  For example:
473                   sox infile -t sunau /dev/audio
474              or
475                   sox infile -t sunau -U -c 1 /dev/audio
476              for older sun equipment.
477
478              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
479
480       .txw   Yamaha TX-16W sampler.  A file format  from  a  Yamaha  sampling
481              keyboard which wrote IBM-PC format 3.5" floppies.  Handles read‐
482              ing of files which do not have the sample rate field set to  one
483              of   the  expected  by  looking  at  some  other  bytes  in  the
484              attack/loop length fields, and defaulting to 33 kHz if the  sam‐
485              ple rate is still unknown.
486
487       .vms   See .dvms.
488
489       .voc (also with -t sndfile)
490              Sound  Blaster  VOC files.  VOC files are multi-part and contain
491              silence parts, looping, and different sample rates for different
492              chunks.   On  input, the silence parts are filled out, loops are
493              rejected, and sample data with a new sample  rate  is  rejected.
494              Silence with a different sample rate is generated appropriately.
495              On output, silence is not detected, nor  are  impossible  sample
496              rates.   SoX  supports  reading (but not writing) VOC files with
497              multiple  blocks,  and  files  containing  μ-law,   A-law,   and
498              2/3/4-bit ADPCM samples.
499
500       .vorbis
501              See .ogg.
502
503       .vox (also with -t sndfile)
504              A  headerless  file  of  Dialogic/OKI  ADPCM audio data commonly
505              comes with the extension .vox.  This ADPCM data has 12-bit  pre‐
506              cision packed into only 4-bits.
507
508              Note:  some  early  Dialogic  hardware does not always reset the
509              ADPCM encoder at the start of each vox file.  This can result in
510              clipping and/or DC offset problems when it comes to decoding the
511              audio.  Whilst little can be done about the clipping, a DC  off‐
512              set  can be removed by passing the decoded audio through a high-
513              pass filter, e.g.:
514                   sox input.vox output.wav highpass 10
515
516       .w64 (optional)
517              Sonic Foundry's 64-bit RIFF/WAV format.
518
519       .wav (also with -t sndfile)
520              Microsoft .WAV RIFF files.  This is the native audio file format
521              of Windows, and widely used for uncompressed audio.
522
523              Normally  .wav  files  have  all formatting information in their
524              headers, and so do not need any format options specified for  an
525              input file.  If any are, they will override the file header, and
526              you will be warned to this effect.  You had better know what you
527              are doing! Output format options will cause a format conversion,
528              and the .wav will written appropriately.
529
530              SoX can read and write linear PCM, μ-law, A-law, MS  ADPCM,  and
531              IMA (or DVI) ADPCM.  WAV files can also contain audio encoded in
532              many other ways (not currently supported with SoX) e.g. MP3;  in
533              some  cases  such  a file can still be read by SoX by overriding
534              the file type, e.g.
535                 play -t mp3 mp3-encoded.wav
536              Big endian versions of RIFF files, called RIFX,  are  also  sup‐
537              ported.  To write a RIFX file, use the -B option with the output
538              file options.
539
540       waveaudio (optional)
541              MS-Windows native audio device driver.  Examples:
542                   sox infile -t waveaudio
543                   sox infile -t waveaudio default
544                   sox infile -t waveaudio 1
545                   sox infile -t waveaudio "High Definition Audio Device ("
546              If the device name is omitted, -1, or default, then you get  the
547              `Microsoft Wave Mapper' device.  Wave Mapper means `use the sys‐
548              tem default audio devices'.   You  can  control  what  `default'
549              means via the OS Control Panel.
550
551              If  the  device  name  given  is some other number, you get that
552              audio device by index; so recording with device name 0 would get
553              the first input device (perhaps the microphone), 1 would get the
554              second (perhaps line in), etc.  Playback using 0  will  get  the
555              first output device (usually the only audio device).
556
557              If  the  device name given is something other than a number, SoX
558              tries to match it (maximum 31 characters) against the  names  of
559              the available devices.
560
561              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
562
563       .wavpcm
564              A non-standard, but widely used, variant of .wav.  Some applica‐
565              tions cannot read a standard WAV  file  header  for  PCM-encoded
566              data with sample-size greater than 16-bits or with more than two
567              channels, but can read a non-standard WAV header.  It is  likely
568              that such applications will eventually be updated to support the
569              standard header, but in the mean time, this SoX  format  can  be
570              used  to  create  files with the non-standard header that should
571              work with these applications.  (Note that SoX will automatically
572              detect and read WAV files with the non-standard header.)
573
574              The  most common use of this file-type is likely to be along the
575              following lines:
576                   sox infile.any -t wavpcm -s outfile.wav
577
578       .wv (optional)
579              WavPack lossless audio compression.  Note that, when  converting
580              .wav  to this format and back again, the RIFF header is not nec‐
581              essarily preserved losslessly (though the audio is).
582
583       .wve (also with -t sndfile)
584              Psion 8-bit A-law.  Used on Psion SIBO PDAs (Series 3 and  simi‐
585              lar).  This format is deprecated in SoX, but will continue to be
586              used in libsndfile.
587
588       .xa    Maxis XA files.  These are 16-bit  ADPCM  audio  files  used  by
589              Maxis  games.   Writing  .xa  files  is currently not supported,
590              although adding write support should not be very difficult.
591
592       .xi (optional)
593              Fasttracker 2 Extended Instrument format.
594

SEE ALSO

596       sox(1), soxi(1), libsox(3), octave(1), wget(1)
597
598       The SoX web page at http://sox.sourceforge.net
599       SoX scripting examples at http://sox.sourceforge.net/Docs/Scripts
600
601   References
602       [1]    Wikipedia, M3U, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U
603
604       [2]    Wikipedia, PLS, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLS_(file_format)
605

LICENSE

607       Copyright 1998-2011 Chris Bagwell and SoX Contributors.
608       Copyright 1991 Lance Norskog and Sundry Contributors.
609

AUTHORS

611       Chris Bagwell (cbagwell@users.sourceforge.net).  Other authors and con‐
612       tributors are listed in the ChangeLog file that is distributed with the
613       source code.
614
615
616
617soxformat                      February 19, 2011                        SoX(7)
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