Audio data can be acquired at a wide range of sample rates and stored in compressed or uncompressed formats, with various possible levels of binary numerical precision.
Therefore, it is necessary to have a format specification in order to know how to read and interpret a given format's data.
A variety of file formats exist for storing audio data. The most common audio file formats are:
The program SoX
is a utility for converting between various soundfile formats.
File headers describe the contents of audio files, which are usually arranged in blocks or chunks. Various chunk types typically exist to specify, in addition to the audio data, attributes such as markers, instrumentation, comments, ...
The Downloadable Sounds (DLS)
format was designed to allow for consistent and transferrable wavetable sound playback in applications such as games and synthesizers.
