WAV

From True Audio Codec Software

WAV (or WAVE), short for WAVE form audio format, is a Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com) and IBM (http://www.ibm.com) audio file format standard for storing audio on PCs. It is a variant of the RIFF bitstream format method for storing data in "chunks", and thus also close to the IFF and the AIFF format used on Macintosh (http://www.apple.com/) computers. It takes into account some differences of the Intel (http://www.intel.com) CPU such as little-endian byte order. The RIFF format acts as a "wrapper" for various audio compression codecs. It is the main format used on Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com) Windows systems for raw audio.

Though a WAV file can hold audio compressed with any codec, by far the most common format is pulse-code modulation (PCM) audio data. Since PCM uses an uncompressed, lossless storage method, which keeps all the samples of an audio track, professional users or audio experts may use the WAV format for maximum audio quality. WAV audio can also be edited and manipulated with relative ease using software.

Limitations

The WAV format is limited to files that are less than 2 gigabytes in size, due to the way its 32-bit file size header is read by most programs. Although this is equivalent to more than 3 hours of CD-quality audio (44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo), it is sometimes necessary to go over this limit. The W64 format was created for use in Sound Forge (http://www.sonymediasoftware.com). Its 64-bit header allows for much longer recording times. This format can be converted using the libsndfile (http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/) library.

Audio CDs

Audio CDs do not use WAV as their storage format. The commonality is that both audio CDs and WAV files have the audio data encoded in PCM. WAV is a data file format for computer use. If one were to transfer an audio CD bit stream to WAV files and record them onto a CD-R as a data disc (in ISO 9660 format), the CD could not be played in a player that was only designed to play audio CDs.

External links

A summary of the WAVE file format (http://ccrma.stanford.edu/courses/422/projects/WaveFormat/)
Another summary of WAVE file format (http://www.sonicspot.com/guide/wavefiles.html)
Wotsit's file format information for WAV (http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?page=8&s=music)
WAV file format (http://www.borg.com/~jglatt/tech/wave.htm)
Basic WAV file format (http://technology.niagarac.on.ca/courses/ctec1631/WavFileFormat.html)