WAVE Utilities 1.17 review

WAVE Utilities package contains three programs for dealing with WAVE format audio files. SimplifyWave The standard permits WAVE for

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 77K Developer: Bill Poser

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WAVE Utilities package contains three programs for dealing with WAVE format audio files.

SimplifyWave

The standard permits WAVE format audio files to contain a variety of chunks, such as playlists, cue lists, and padding. A fair amount of software, however, is unable to parse such complex files. This program converts complex WAVE files into the simplest standard-conforming format by stripping out everything other than the obligatory format chunk and the first data chunk. Messages are printed indicating what chunks have been removed.

RepairWave

Some software generates non-conformant files that purport to be WAVE files. They contain a WAVE header but lack the obligatory data chunk id and size information. The audio data immediately follows the header. This program inserts the missing data chunk id and size information and updates the WAVE chunk size information in the header to reflect this.

InfoWave

Extracts information from a RIFF/WAV or RIFX/WAV file and reports on the contents of the file. It shows the size, type, and location of each chunk and gives the encoding of the audio data, its sampling rate, resolution, number of channels and other information. Typical output looks like this:

0: RIFF identifier.
4: chunk size = 38,642 bytes.
8: WAV identifier.
12: format chunk identifier
16: format chunk size = 18 bytes.
20: data format: PCM.
22: one channel (mono).
24: Sampling Rate = 11,025 samples per second.
28: Average Data Rate = 11,025 bytes per second.
32: Bytes_Per_Sample value of 1 indicates 8-bit mono
34: Bits_Per_Sample = 8.
36: chunk id
40: chunk length
44: chunk of type fact (standard) length 4 bytes
48: chunk id
52: chunk length
56: chunk of type data (standard) length 38,591 bytes
amounting to 0 minutes and 3.5 seconds

These programs were originally called SimplifyWav, wavrepair, and wavinfo.

What's New in This Release:
All three programs now take into account the data chunk padding byte required by the standard in certain cases.
The package is now configured by the GNU autoconf system.
The usage, version, and copyright messages have been updated.