ref: 24e2540aa83607da494ee2fcbb5bb74059bc89af
dir: /README/
SoX: Sound eXchange
-------------------
SoX (also known as Sound eXchange) translates sound files between
different file formats, and optionally applies various sound effects.
SoX is intended as the Swiss Army knife of sound processing tools. It
doesn't do anything very well, but sooner or later it comes in very
handy.
This release understands:
o Raw files in various binary formats
o Raw textual data
o Amiga 8svx files
o Apple/SGI AIFF files
o SUN .au style files
o PCM, u-law, A-law
o G7xx ADPCM files (read only)
o mutant DEC .au files
o NeXT .snd files
o AVR files
o CD-R (music CD format)
o CVS and VMS files (continuous variable slope)
o GSM files
o Macintosh HCOM files
o Amiga MAUD files
o MP3 files (with optional external library)
o IRCAM SoundFile files
o NIST SPHERE files
o Turtle beach SampleVision files.
o Soundtool (DOS) files
o Yamaha TX-16W sampler files.
o Sound Blaster .VOC files
o Ogg Vorbis files (with optional external library)
o FLAC files (with optional external library)
o Dialogic/OKI ADPCM files (.VOX)
o Microsoft .WAV files
o PCM, u-law, A-law
o MS ADPCM, IMA ADPCM
o GSM
o RIFX (big endian)
o Psion (palmtop) A-law WVE files and Record voice notes
o Maxis XA Audio files
o EA ADPCM (read support only, for now)
o Pseudo-file formats that allow direct playing/recording
from some audio devices under UNIX.
o Pseudo-nul file that reads and writes from/to nowhere
The sound effects include:
o Channel averaging, duplication, and removal (general mixer)
o Band-pass filters
o Band-reject filter
o Bass tone control
o Compress and Expand (compand) the dynamic range of a sample.
o Chorus effect
o DCShift audio. Useful to get the best volume adjustments.
o Deemphases filter
o Move sound stage of CD audio to in front of you (for headphone
use)
o Add an echo
o Add a sequence of echos
o Fade in and out
o Apply a flanger effect
o Apply a high-pass filter
o Apply a low-pass filter
o Apply an equalizer effect
o Add dithering/masking noise to a signal
o Multi-band compander
o Pan sound between channels
o Apply a phaser effect
o Change the pitch of a sound file without affecting its speed
o Repeat audio data
o Change sampling rates using several different algorithms. A
'resample' and 'polyphase' effect use high-grade signal rate
changes using real signal theory!
o Apply a reverb effect
o Reverse the sound samples (to search for Satanic messages ;-)
o Detect periods of silence and start and stop processing based on
it
o Change the speed of samples being played (like speeding up the
motor on a tape recorder)
o Display general stats on a sound sample
o Stretch/shorten the duration of a sound file (without affecting
pitch).
o Swap stereo channels
o Create sounds with a simple synthesizer.
o Treble tone control
o Trim audio data from beginning and end of file.
o Add the world-famous Fender Vibro-Champ effect
o Adjust volume of samples
o Noise elimination using frequency profiling
o Resample using libsamplerate (aka Secret Rabbit code, optional
external library).
Installing:
Unless your using a pre-compiled binary version, you will need to
compile SoX as described in the INSTALL file. Please read that file
for further instructions.
SoX is distributed with two text files named sox.txt and soxexam.txt.
These files give a background on how SoX deals with sound files and
what command line options are available to convert a sound file to
another file format and how to apply sound effects.
SoX has an auto-detect feature that attempts to figure out the nature
of a sound file. It does this by looking for 'magic values' in the
header of the audio file. If it is unable to detect the format of the
sound file then the user must use command line options to inform SoX.
I hope to inspire the creation of a common base of sound processing
tools for computer multimedia work, similar to the PBM toolkit for
image manipulation.
If you have bug fixes/enhancements, please send it to me as I would
like to coordinate the releases. Please document your changes. I do
not possess every kind of computer currently sold, and SoX is now
beyond the phase where I can understand and test most of your
contributions.
The majority of SoX features and source code are contributed by you
the user. Thank you very much for making SoX a success!