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SoX: Sound eXchange
SoX (also known as Sound eXchange) translates sound samples 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 (continous variable slope)
o GSM files.
o Macintosh HCOM files
o Amiga MAUD files
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 Microsoft .WAV files
o PCM, u-law, a-law
o MS ADPCM, IMA ADPCM
o GSM
o Psion (palmtop) A-law WVE files
o Pseudo-file fomats that allow direct playing/recording
from some audio devices under unix.
The sound effects include:
o Channel Averaging
o Band-pass filters
o Band-reject filter
o Chorus effect
o Cut out loop samples
o Add an echo
o Add a sequence of echos
o Apply a flanger effect
o Apply a high-pass filter
o Apply a low-pass filter
o Pan sound between channels
o Change the pitch of a sound file
o Display a list of loops in a file
o Add masking noise to a signal
o Apply a phaser effect
o Convert from stereo to mono
o Change sampling rates using several different algorithms.A
'resample' and 'poyphase' 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 Change the speed of samples being played (like speeding up the motor
on a tape recorder)
o Stretch/shorten the duration of a sound file.
o Convert from mono to stereo
o Swap stereo channels
o Display general stats on a sound sample
o Trim audio data from beginning and end of file.
o Add the world-famous Fender Vibro-Champ effect
o Adjust volume of samples
History:
This is the 12th release, Patchlevel 17 of the Sound Tools.
SoX was originally written and maintained by Lance Norskog but
unfortunetly he has stopped maintaining it since 1995. I, Chris
Bagwell (cbagwell@sprynet.com), have started maintaining it since
1996 to the present.
Caveats:
Technically, SoX is made up of a sound file processing library called libst
and SoX is a program implemented using this library.
Installing:
Unless your using a precompiled binary version, you will need to compile
SoX as described in the INSTALL file. Please read that file for further
instructions.
Now, read sox.txt and soxexam.txt. This gives a background on how
SoX deals with sound files and how to convert this format
to that format, and apply various effects.
SoX has an auto-detect feature that attempts to figure out
the nature of an unmarked sound sample. It works very well.
This feature is used if you specify '-t auto' for the file type.
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 don't
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!
Creator:
Lance Norskog thinman@meer.net (inactive currently)
Mantainer:
Chris Bagwell cbagwell@sprynet.com
Contributors:
Juergen Mueller jmueller@uia.ua.ac.be
chorus, echo, echos, flanger, phaser, and reverb
effects.
Guido Van Rossum guido@cwi.nl
AU, AIFF, AUTO, HCOM, reverse,
many bug fixes
Jef Poskanzer jef@well.sf.ca.us
original code for u-law and delay line
Bill Neisius bill%solaria@hac2arpa.hac.com
DOS port, 8SVX, Sounder, Soundtool formats
Apollo fixes, stat with auto-picker
Rick Richardson rick@digibd.com
WAV and SB driver handlers, fixes
David Champion dgc3@midway.uchicago.edu
Amiga port
Pace Willisson pace@blitz.com
Fixes for ESIX
Leigh Smith leigh@psychokiller.dialix.oz.au
SMP and comment movement support.
AIFF Loop/MIDI support
David Sanderson dws@ssec.wisc.edu
AIX3.1 fixes
Glenn Lewis glewis@pcocd2.intel.com
AIFF chunking fixes
Brian Campbell brianc@quantum.qnx.com
QNX port and 16-bit fixes
Chris Adams gt8741@prism.gatech.edu
DOS port fixes
John Kohl jtkohl@kolvir.elcr.ca.us
BSD386 port, VOC stereo support
Ken Kubo ken@hmcvax.claremont.edu
VMS port, VOC stereo support
Frank Gadegast <phade@cs.tu-berlin.de>
Microsoft C 7.0 & C Borland 3.0 ports
David Elliot <dce@scmc.sony.com>
CD-R format support
David Sears <dns@essnj3.essnjay.com>
Linux support
Tom Littlejohn <tlit@seq1.loc.gov>
Raw textual data
Boisy G. Pitre boisy@microware.com
OS9 port
Sun Microsystems, Guido Van Rossum
CCITT G.711, G.721, G.723 implementation
Graeme Gill graeme@labtam.labtam.oz.au
A-LAW format, Good .WAV handling,
avg channel expansion
Allen Grider grider@hfsi.hfsi.com
VOC stereo mode, WAV file handling
Michel Fingerhut Michel.Fingerhut@ircam.fr
Upgrade 'sf' format to current IRCAM format.
Float file support.
Chris Knight
Achimedes Acorn support
Richard Caley R.Caley@ed.ac.uk
Psion WVE handler
Lutz Vieweg lkv@mania.RoBIN.de
MAUD (Amiga) file handler
Tim Gardner timg@tpi.com
Windows NT port for V7
Jimen Ching jiching@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu
Libst porting bugs
Lauren Weinstein lauren@vortex.com
DOS porting, scripts, professional use
Stan Brooks stabro@megsinet.net
Rewrite of resample and polyphase code.
DSP filter effect. Some test code/scripts.
Stuart Daines <sjd.u-net.com>
Patches for r/w support of gsm-encoded wav files,
Cleanup of wav.c.
Chris Bagwell cbagwell@sprynet.com
OSS and Sun players, bugfixes, ADPCM support,
patch collection and maintance.
Matthias Nutt
Multiple effects from command line.
(your name could be here, too)
(I've probably lost a few, and several people fixed
the same bugs.)