ref: 18298ac2ea381cbee1b7e45cf0c824cca29b097e
dir: /CHEAT/
CHEAT SHEET ----------- This is a cheat sheet of examples using SOX to do various common sound file conversions. The file format examples are starting to become dated. Any offers to update this document to explain the ends and outs of each format would be appreciated. In general, sox will attempt to take an input sound file format and convert it to a new file format using a similar data types and sample rates. For instance "sox monkey.au monkey.wav" would try and convert the mono 8000Hz u-law .au file to a 8000Hz u-law .wav file. If an output format doesn't support the same data types as the input file then Sox will generally select a default format to save it in. You can select a data type of your choice using command line options. You can also override data type values to have a output file of higher or lower percision data (and thus higher or lower file size). Most file formats that contain complete headers will automatically convert to a similar format. This means .wav, .aiff, and .voc files will readily convert to each other without the need of complex command lines. If you create a sound file and you can not play it, check to make sure your sound card to play a file using this data type. SOX is great to use along with other command line programs. The currently most used example is to use mpg123 to convert mp3 files in to wav files. The following command line will do this: mpg123 -b 10000 -s filename.mp3 | sox -t raw -r 44100 -s -w -c 2 - filename.wav The SUN examples below all assume you have the old SUN voice-quality 8khz u-law hardware. If you do then you will want to have all your .au files in this format so that you cat do thinks like "cat soundfile.au > /dev/audio" and you will hear a good file. If the .AU file doesn't have a proper header, then you'll need the second command line to let sox know the values. If the .AU has a proper header then you can remove the "-r 8000 -U -b" in front of "file.au". SUN .au to Mac .snd: sox file.au -r 11025 -t ub file.snd or: sox -t ul -r 8000 file.au -r 11025 -t ub file.snd When you copy the file to the Mac, you'll have to set the sample rate by hand. Mac .snd to SUN .au sox -r 11025 -t ub file.snd -r 8000 -U -b file.au The Mac file might also be at sample rates 5012, 22050, or 44100. PC .voc to SUN .au sox file.voc -r 8000 -U -b file.au SUN .au to PC .voc sox file.au file.voc or: sox -r 8000 -t ul file.au file.voc SUN .au to WAV - without clipping sox file.au -s -w file.wav or: sox -t ul -r 8000 file.au -s -w file.wav WAV to SUN .au sox file.wav -r 8000 -U -b file.au WAV to VOC sox file.wav -u -b file.voc VOC to WAV sox file.voc file.wav Any file to SUN .au sox -t auto file.X -c 1 -t aiff - | sox -t aiff - -r 8000 -U -b -t au file.au Just convert file format without making a disk file. Example: convert input stream in AIFF format to output stream in WAV format: sox -t aiff - -t wav - Some people try to put this kind of command in scripts. It is important to understand how the internals of Sox work when working with compressed audio, including u-law, a-law, ADPCM, or GSM. Sox takes ALL input data types and converts them to uncompressed 32-bit signed data. It will then convert this internal version into the requested output format. This means unneeded noise can be introduced from decompressing data and then recompressing, such as would happen when reading u-law data and writing back out u-law data. If possible, specify the output data to be uncompressed PCM. Good luck!