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) are marked e.g. `(also with -t
18       sndfile)'.  This might be useful if you have a file that  doesn't  work
19       with  SoX's default format readers and writers, and there's an external
20       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 -b 16 -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, and one line that contains the  number
192              of  channels.  Subsequent lines contain two or more numeric data
193              intems: the time since the beginning of the first sample and the
194              sample value for each channel.
195
196              Values  are normalized so that the maximum and minimum are 1 and
197              -1.  This file format can be  used  to  create  data  files  for
198              external  programs such as FFT analysers or graph routines.  SoX
199              can also convert a file in this format  back  into  one  of  the
200              other file formats.
201
202              Example containing only 2 stereo samples of silence:
203
204                  ; Sample Rate 8012
205                  ; Channels 2
206                              0   0    0
207                  0.00012481278   0    0
208
209       .dvms, .vms
210              Used  in  Germany  to  compress  speech audio for voice mail.  A
211              self-describing variant of cvsd.
212
213       .fap (optional)
214              See .paf.
215
216       .flac (optional; also with -t sndfile)
217              Xiph.org's Free Lossless Audio CODEC compressed audio.  FLAC  is
218              an  open,  patent-free CODEC designed for compressing music.  It
219              is similar to MP3 and Ogg Vorbis,  but  lossless,  meaning  that
220              audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality.
221
222              SoX  can  read  native FLAC files (.flac) but not Ogg FLAC files
223              (.ogg).  [But see .ogg below for information relating to support
224              for Ogg Vorbis files.]
225
226              SoX  can write native FLAC files according to a given or default
227              compression level.  8 is the default compression level and gives
228              the  best  (but  slowest)  compression;  0  gives the least (but
229              fastest) compression.  The compression level is  selected  using
230              the -C option [see sox(1)] with a whole number from 0 to 8.
231
232       .fssd  An alias for the .u8 format.
233
234       .gsrt  Grandstream  ring-tone  files.  Whilst this file format can con‐
235              tain A-Law, μ-law, GSM, G.722,  G.723,  G.726,  G.728,  or  iLBC
236              encoded  audio,  SoX supports reading and writing only A-Law and
237              μ-law.  E.g.
238                 sox music.wav -t gsrt ring.bin
239                 play ring.bin
240
241       .gsm (optional; also with -t sndfile)
242              GSM 06.10 Lossy Speech Compression.  A  lossy  format  for  com‐
243              pressing  speech which is used in the Global Standard for Mobile
244              telecommunications (GSM).  It's good for its purpose,  shrinking
245              audio  data  size,  but  it  will introduce lots of noise when a
246              given audio signal is encoded and decoded multiple times.   This
247              format  is  used  by some voice mail applications.  It is rather
248              CPU intensive.
249
250       .hcom  Macintosh HCOM files.  These are Mac  FSSD  files  with  Huffman
251              compression.
252
253       .htk   Single  channel  16-bit  PCM  format  used by HTK, a toolkit for
254              building Hidden Markov Model speech processing tools.
255
256       .ircam (also with -t sndfile)
257              Another name for .sf.
258
259       .ima (also with -t sndfile)
260              A headerless file of IMA ADPCM  audio  data.  IMA  ADPCM  claims
261              16-bit  precision packed into only 4 bits, but in fact sounds no
262              better than .vox.
263
264       .lpc, .lpc10
265              LPC-10 is a compression  scheme  for  speech  developed  in  the
266              United   States.   See   http://www.arl.wustl.edu/~jaf/lpc/  for
267              details. There is no associated file format, so SoX's  implemen‐
268              tation is headerless.
269
270       .mat, .mat4, .mat5 (optional)
271              Matlab 4.2/5.0 (respectively GNU Octave 2.0/2.1) format (.mat is
272              the same as .mat4).
273
274       .m3u   A playlist format; contains a list  of  audio  files.   SoX  can
275              read,  but  not  write this file format.  See [1] for details of
276              this format.
277
278       .maud  An IFF-conforming audio file type, registered by MS  MacroSystem
279              Computer  GmbH, published along with the `Toccata' sound-card on
280              the Amiga.  Allows 8bit linear, 16bit linear,  A-Law,  μ-law  in
281              mono and stereo.
282
283       .mp3, .mp2 (optional read, optional write)
284              MP3  compressed  audio;  MP3  (MPEG  Layer  3)  is a part of the
285              patent-encumbered MPEG standards for audio  and  video  compres‐
286              sion.   It is a lossy compression format that achieves good com‐
287              pression rates with little quality loss.
288
289              Because MP3 is patented, SoX cannot be distributed with MP3 sup‐
290              port  without  incurring  the  patent  holder's fees.  Users who
291              require SoX with MP3 support must currently  compile  and  build
292              SoX with the MP3 libraries (LAME & MAD) from source code, or, in
293              some cases, obtain pre-built dynamically loadable libraries.
294
295              When reading MP3 files, up to 28 bits  of  precision  is  stored
296              although  only  16  bits  is reported to user.  This is to allow
297              default behavior of writing 16 bit output  files.   A  user  can
298              specify  a higher precision for the output file to prevent loss‐
299              ing this extra information.  MP3 output files will use up to  24
300              bits of precision while encoding.
301
302              MP3 compression parameters can be selected using SoX's -C option
303              as follows (note that the current syntax is subject to change):
304
305              The primary parameter to the LAME encoder is the  bit  rate.  If
306              the  value  of the -C value is a positive integer, it's taken as
307              the bitrate in kbps (e.g. if you specify 128, it uses 128 kbps).
308
309              The  second  most  important  parameter  is  probably  "quality"
310              (really  performance), which allows balancing encoding speed vs.
311              quality.  In LAME, 0 specifies highest quality but is very slow,
312              while 9 selects poor quality, but is fast. (5 is the default and
313              2 is recommended as a good trade-off for high quality encodes.)
314
315              Because the -C value is a float, the fractional part is used  to
316              select  quality.  128.2 selects 128 kbps encoding with a quality
317              of 2. There is one problem with this approach. We  need  128  to
318              specify  128  kbps encoding with default quality, so 0 means use
319              default. Instead of 0 you have to use .01 (or  .99)  to  specify
320              the highest quality (128.01 or 128.99).
321
322              LAME  uses  bitrate  to  specify  a constant bitrate, but higher
323              quality can be achieved using Variable Bit Rate (VBR). VBR qual‐
324              ity  (really size) is selected using a number from 0 to 9. Use a
325              value of 0 for high quality, larger files,  and  9  for  smaller
326              files of lower quality. 4 is the default.
327
328              In  order  to squeeze the selection of VBR into the the -C value
329              float we use negative numbers to select VRR. -4.2  would  select
330              default  VBR encoding (size) with high quality (speed). One spe‐
331              cial case is 0, which is a valid VBR encoding parameter but  not
332              a  valid bitrate.  Compression value of 0 is always treated as a
333              high quality vbr, as a result both -0.2 and 0.2 are  treated  as
334              highest quality VBR (size) and high quality (speed).
335
336              See also Ogg Vorbis for a similar format.
337
338       .nist (also with -t sndfile)
339              See .sph.
340
341       .ogg, .vorbis (optional)
342              Xiph.org's  Ogg  Vorbis  compressed  audio; an open, patent-free
343              CODEC designed for music and streaming audio.   It  is  a  lossy
344              compression  format  (similar  to  MP3, VQF & AAC) that achieves
345              good compression rates with a minimum amount of quality loss.
346
347              SoX can decode all types of Ogg Vorbis files, and can encode  at
348              different compression levels/qualities given as a number from -1
349              (highest compression/lowest quality) to 10 (lowest  compression,
350              highest  quality).   By  default the encoding quality level is 3
351              (which gives an encoded rate of approx. 112kbps), but  this  can
352              be changed using the -C option (see above) with a number from -1
353              to 10; fractional numbers (e.g.  3.6) are also allowed.   Decod‐
354              ing  is  somewhat  CPU intensive and encoding is very CPU inten‐
355              sive.
356
357              See also .mp3 for a similar format.
358
359       .opus (optional)
360              Xiph.org's Opus compressed audio; an  open,  lossy,  low-latency
361              codec  offering  a  wide range of compression rates. It uses the
362              Ogg container.
363
364              SoX can only read Opus files, not write them.
365
366       oss (optional)
367              Open Sound System /dev/dsp device driver; supports both  playing
368              and  recording  audio.   OSS  support  is available in Unix-like
369              operating systems, sometimes  together  with  alternative  sound
370              systems (such as ALSA).  Examples:
371                   sox infile -t oss
372                   sox infile -t oss /dev/dsp
373                   sox -b 16 -t oss /dev/dsp outfile
374              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
375
376       .paf, .fap (optional)
377              Ensoniq PARIS file format (big and little-endian respectively).
378
379       .pls   A  playlist  format;  contains  a  list of audio files.  SoX can
380              read, but not write this file format.  See [2]  for  details  of
381              this format.
382
383              Note:  SoX  support  for  SHOUTcast PLS relies on wget(1) and is
384              only partially supported: it's necessary to  specify  the  audio
385              type manually, e.g.
386                   play -t mp3 "http://a.server/pls?rn=265&file=filename.pls"
387              and  SoX  does  not  know about alternative servers - hit Ctrl-C
388              twice in quick succession to quit.
389
390       .prc   Psion Record. Used in Psion EPOC PDAs (Series 5, Revo and  simi‐
391              lar)  for  System  alarms  and  recordings  made by the built-in
392              Record application.  When writing, SoX defaults to A-law,  which
393              is recommended; if you must use ADPCM, then use the -e ima-adpcm
394              switch. The sound quality is poor because Psion Record seems  to
395              insist  on  frames  of  800  samples or fewer, so that the ADPCM
396              CODEC has to be reset at every  800  frames,  which  causes  the
397              sound to glitch every tenth of a second.
398
399       pulseaudio (optional)
400              PulseAudio driver; supports both playing and recording of audio.
401              PulseAudio is a cross platform networked  sound  server.   If  a
402              file  name  is specified with this driver, it is ignored.  Exam‐
403              ples:
404                   sox infile -t pulseaudio
405                   sox infile -t pulseaudio default
406              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
407
408       .pvf (optional)
409              Portable Voice Format.
410
411       .sd2 (optional)
412              Sound Designer 2 format.
413
414       .sds (optional)
415              MIDI Sample Dump Standard.
416
417       .sf (also with -t sndfile)
418              IRCAM  SDIF  (Institut  de  Recherche  et  Coordination   Acous‐
419              tique/Musique  Sound  Description  Interchange  Format). Used by
420              academic music software such as  the  CSound  package,  and  the
421              MixView sound sample editor.
422
423       .sln   Asterisk  PBX  `signed linear' 8khz, 16-bit signed integer, lit‐
424              tle-endian raw format.
425
426       .sph, .nist (also with -t sndfile)
427              SPHERE (SPeech HEader Resources) is a  file  format  defined  by
428              NIST  (National  Institute  of  Standards and Technology) and is
429              used with speech audio.  SoX can read these files when they con‐
430              tain  μ-law and PCM data.  It will ignore any header information
431              that says the data is compressed using shorten  compression  and
432              will treat the data as either μ-law or PCM.  This will allow SoX
433              and the command line shorten program to be  run  together  using
434              pipes  to  encompasses  the data and then pass the result to SoX
435              for processing.
436
437       .smp   Turtle Beach SampleVision files.  SMP files are for use with the
438              PC-DOS  package  SampleVision  by  Turtle Beach Softworks.  This
439              package is for communication to several MIDI samplers.  All sam‐
440              ple  rates  are  supported  by the package, although not all are
441              supported by the samplers themselves.  Currently loop points are
442              ignored.
443
444       .snd   See .au, .sndr and .sndt.
445
446       sndfile (optional)
447              This  is  a  pseudo-type  that forces libsndfile to be used. For
448              writing files, the actual file type is then taken from the  out‐
449              put file name; for reading them, it is deduced from the file.
450
451       sndio (optional)
452              OpenBSD audio device driver; supports both playing and recording
453              audio.
454                   sox infile -t sndio
455              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
456
457       .sndr  Sounder files.  An MS-DOS/Windows format from  the  early  '90s.
458              Sounder files usually have the extension `.SND'.
459
460       .sndt  SoundTool  files.  An MS-DOS/Windows format from the early '90s.
461              SoundTool files usually have the extension `.SND'.
462
463       .sou   An alias for the .u8 raw format.
464
465       .sox   SoX's native uncompressed PCM format, intended for  storing  (or
466              piping)  audio  at  intermediate processing points (i.e. between
467              SoX invocations).  It has much in common with the  popular  WAV,
468              AIFF,  and  AU  uncompressed  PCM formats, but has the following
469              specific characteristics: the PCM samples are always  stored  as
470              32  bit  signed integers, the samples are stored (by default) as
471              `native endian', and the  number  of  samples  in  the  file  is
472              recorded as a 64-bit integer.  Comments are also supported.
473
474              See `Special Filenames' in sox(1) for examples of using the .sox
475              format with `pipes'.
476
477       sunau (optional)
478              Sun /dev/audio device driver; supports both playing and  record‐
479              ing audio.  For example:
480                   sox infile -t sunau /dev/audio
481              or
482                   sox infile -t sunau -e mu-law -c 1 /dev/audio
483              for older sun equipment.
484
485              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
486
487       .txw   Yamaha  TX-16W  sampler.   A  file format from a Yamaha sampling
488              keyboard which wrote IBM-PC format 3.5" floppies.  Handles read‐
489              ing  of files which do not have the sample rate field set to one
490              of  the  expected  by  looking  at  some  other  bytes  in   the
491              attack/loop  length fields, and defaulting to 33 kHz if the sam‐
492              ple rate is still unknown.
493
494       .vms   See .dvms.
495
496       .voc (also with -t sndfile)
497              Sound Blaster VOC files.  VOC files are multi-part  and  contain
498              silence parts, looping, and different sample rates for different
499              chunks.  On input, the silence parts are filled out,  loops  are
500              rejected,  and  sample  data with a new sample rate is rejected.
501              Silence with a different sample rate is generated appropriately.
502              On  output,  silence  is not detected, nor are impossible sample
503              rates.  SoX supports reading (but not writing)  VOC  files  with
504              multiple   blocks,   and  files  containing  μ-law,  A-law,  and
505              2/3/4-bit ADPCM samples.
506
507       .vorbis
508              See .ogg.
509
510       .vox (also with -t sndfile)
511              A headerless file of  Dialogic/OKI  ADPCM  audio  data  commonly
512              comes  with the extension .vox.  This ADPCM data has 12-bit pre‐
513              cision packed into only 4-bits.
514
515              Note: some early Dialogic hardware does  not  always  reset  the
516              ADPCM encoder at the start of each vox file.  This can result in
517              clipping and/or DC offset problems when it comes to decoding the
518              audio.   Whilst little can be done about the clipping, a DC off‐
519              set can be removed by passing the decoded audio through a  high-
520              pass filter, e.g.:
521                   sox input.vox output.wav highpass 10
522
523       .w64 (optional)
524              Sonic Foundry's 64-bit RIFF/WAV format.
525
526       .wav (also with -t sndfile)
527              Microsoft .WAV RIFF files.  This is the native audio file format
528              of Windows, and widely used for uncompressed audio.
529
530              Normally .wav files have all  formatting  information  in  their
531              headers,  and so do not need any format options specified for an
532              input file.  If any are, they will override the file header, and
533              you will be warned to this effect.  You had better know what you
534              are doing! Output format options will cause a format conversion,
535              and the .wav will written appropriately.
536
537              SoX can read and write linear PCM, floating point, μ-law, A-law,
538              MS ADPCM, and IMA (or DVI) ADPCM encoded samples.  WAV files can
539              also  contain  audio  encoded  in many other ways (not currently
540              supported with SoX) e.g. MP3; in some  cases  such  a  file  can
541              still be read by SoX by overriding the file type, e.g.
542                 play -t mp3 mp3-encoded.wav
543              Big  endian  versions  of RIFF files, called RIFX, are also sup‐
544              ported.  To write a RIFX file, use the -B option with the output
545              file options.
546
547       waveaudio (optional)
548              MS-Windows native audio device driver.  Examples:
549                   sox infile -t waveaudio
550                   sox infile -t waveaudio default
551                   sox infile -t waveaudio 1
552                   sox infile -t waveaudio "High Definition Audio Device ("
553              If  the device name is omitted, -1, or default, then you get the
554              `Microsoft Wave Mapper' device.  Wave Mapper means `use the sys‐
555              tem  default  audio  devices'.   You  can control what `default'
556              means via the OS Control Panel.
557
558              If the device name given is some  other  number,  you  get  that
559              audio device by index; so recording with device name 0 would get
560              the first input device (perhaps the microphone), 1 would get the
561              second  (perhaps  line  in), etc.  Playback using 0 will get the
562              first output device (usually the only audio device).
563
564              If the device name given is something other than a  number,  SoX
565              tries  to  match it (maximum 31 characters) against the names of
566              the available devices.
567
568              See also play(1), rec(1), and sox(1) -d.
569
570       .wavpcm
571              A non-standard, but widely used, variant of .wav.  Some applica‐
572              tions  cannot  read  a  standard WAV file header for PCM-encoded
573              data with sample-size greater than 16-bits or with more than two
574              channels,  but can read a non-standard WAV header.  It is likely
575              that such applications will eventually be updated to support the
576              standard  header,  but  in the mean time, this SoX format can be
577              used to create files with the non-standard  header  that  should
578              work with these applications.  (Note that SoX will automatically
579              detect and read WAV files with the non-standard header.)
580
581              The most common use of this file-type is likely to be along  the
582              following lines:
583                   sox infile.any -t wavpcm -e signed-integer outfile.wav
584
585       .wv (optional)
586              WavPack  lossless audio compression.  Note that, when converting
587              .wav to this format and back again, the RIFF header is not  nec‐
588              essarily preserved losslessly (though the audio is).
589
590       .wve (also with -t sndfile)
591              Psion  8-bit A-law.  Used on Psion SIBO PDAs (Series 3 and simi‐
592              lar).  This format is deprecated in SoX, but will continue to be
593              used in libsndfile.
594
595       .xa    Maxis  XA  files.   These  are  16-bit ADPCM audio files used by
596              Maxis games.  Writing .xa  files  is  currently  not  supported,
597              although adding write support should not be very difficult.
598
599       .xi (optional)
600              Fasttracker 2 Extended Instrument format.
601

SEE ALSO

603       sox(1), soxi(1), libsox(3), octave(1), wget(1)
604
605       The SoX web page at http://sox.sourceforge.net
606       SoX scripting examples at http://sox.sourceforge.net/Docs/Scripts
607
608   References
609       [1]    Wikipedia, M3U, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U
610
611       [2]    Wikipedia, PLS, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLS_(file_format)
612

LICENSE

614       Copyright 1998-2013 Chris Bagwell and SoX Contributors.
615       Copyright 1991 Lance Norskog and Sundry Contributors.
616

AUTHORS

618       Chris Bagwell (cbagwell@users.sourceforge.net).  Other authors and con‐
619       tributors are listed in the ChangeLog file that is distributed with the
620       source code.
621
622
623
624soxformat                      December 31, 2014                        SoX(7)
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