8-Bit Sampled Voice (8SVX) is an audio file format standard developed by Electronic Arts for the Commodore-Amiga computer series. It is a data subtype of the IFF file container format. It typically contains linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) digital audio. The 8SVX subtype stores 8-bit audio data within chunks contained within an IFF file container. 8SVX subtypes can exist alone within IFF file containers (audio only), or can be multiplexed together with other IFF subtypes, such as video animation streams.

This format was originally created as an alternative to mp3. The idea was to achieve a small file size with better sound quality. The first versions weren’t quite successful, but with the development of AAC, it became possible to store sound with less loss of quality, and with the same file sizes as that of mp3.

Dolby Digital film format, developed for encoding audio tracks for films. It supports up to 6 audio channels: left, right, front, rear, upper and lower. Because of this, it allows you to store “3-dimensional” audio tracks. It’s widely used both in movie theaters and by the users themselves for storing audio tracks in film libraries at home.

Is a standard for storing audio files in Apple operating systems. It was developed in 1988 based on the IFF format and is a lossless format – audio data is stored in an uncompressed form. In essence, AIFF is an analog to WAV for the Apple Macintosh platform.

Files containing the AMB extension are known as AIMMS Model Files as they refer to the models that the AIMMS (Advanced Integrated Multidimensional Modeling Software) created. The AMB file extension was developed by Paragon Decision Technology and the files with this extension are categorized as data files. The data that these AMB files contain are procedures, identifier declarations as well as core model functions. These files are also based on AIMMS modeling proprietary language wherein these files are saved with the AIMMS project (.PRJ) file it is associated with.

This format was originally intended for voice compression and is able to change the bit rates of encoded audio data. AMR is actively used for encoding and decoding voice while its being transmitted over network channels. The format allows one to consider network capacity and adapt it to channel loads. Due to this, the voice quality is practically undiminished.

This is a proprietary format (with a paid license) developed by Matthew T. Ashland. Sound is stored without any loss, but the format isn’t too common because of license restrictions and because the official codecs works only on the Windows platform.

AU is a file extension for a sound file format belonging to Sun, NeXT and DEC and used in UNIX. The AU file format is also known as the Sparc-audio or u-law fomat. AU files contain three parts: the audio data and text for a header (containing 24 bytes) and an annotation block.

The AVR file extension is a data format known as Audio Visual Research File. AVR files were developed for use on Apple Macintosh computers. They were specifically, used for the older 680×0-based Atari ST computer systems.

An audio format from Apple that was developed to remove the limitations of AIFF and WAV formats. This is a container that can store sound encoded by various algorithms and track metadata. Its characteristic feature – the format doesn’t have limitations on file size and so this allows one to store infinitely long recordings.

A file with the CDDA file extension is a CD Digital Audio file that stores audio in the AIFF format. CDDA files are normally seen only when audio files have been ripped from an audio CD that uses the CD Digital Audio specification. This is most often done through the Apple iTunes program with the Audio CD burn option.

Continuously Variable Slope Delta modulation is a voice coding method. It is a delta modulation with variable step size (adaptive delta modulation), first proposed by Greefkes and Riemens in 1970

Continuously Variable Slope Delta modulation is a voice coding method. It is a delta modulation with variable step size (adaptive delta modulation), first proposed by Greefkes and Riemens in 1970

CVU file is a CVSD Unfiltered Audio. Continuously Variable Slope Delta modulation (unfiltered) is an alternative handler for CVSD that is unfiltered but can be used with any bit-rate.

Digital Speech Standard (DSS) is a proprietary compressed digital audio file format defined by the International Voice Association, a co-operative venture by Olympus, Philips and Grundig. DSS was originally developed in 1994 by Grundig with the University of Nuremberg. In 1997, the digital speech standard was released, which was based on the previous codec. It is commonly used on digital dictation recorders. Modern phycoacoustical codecs that perform nearly as well at only slightly higher bitrates have led to this speech coding standard being less used in modern voice recording equipment.

Is a recording format, designed for use in movie theaters. Who is a direct competitor of Dolby Digital. It is used to accompany the film with the movie, as well as on optical video discs. It supports two modes of audio: 5.1 and 7.1, allows full bit rate in high end home theaters.

Used in Germany to compress speech audio for voice mail. A self-describing variant of cvsd (Continuously Variable Slope Delta modulation).

Ensoniq PARIS file format (little-endian)

This is open lossless codecs, developed under the Ogg project. Lately it’s become quite popular: many users wishing to store audio with original quality choose FLAC. This is partly in connection with the fact that codecs uses IDv1 and IDv3 tags – this allows a user to sort an audio collection according to one’s particular tastes, changing the original metadata of the tracks.

An alias for the .u8 format

GSM 06.10 Lossy Speech Compression. A lossy format for compressing speech which is used in the Global Standard for Mobile telecommunications (GSM). It’s good for its purpose, shrinking audio data size, but it will introduce lots of noise when a given audio signal is encoded and decoded multiple times. This format is used by some voice mail applications. It is rather CPU intensive.

Grandstream ring-tone files. Whilst this file format can contain A-Law, μ-law, GSM, G.722, G.723, G.726, G.728, or iLBC encoded audio, SoX supports reading and writing only A-Law and μ-law.

Macintosh HCOM files. These are Mac FSSD files with Huffman compression.

Single channel 16-bit PCM format used by HTK, a toolkit for building Hidden Markov Model speech processing tools

A headerless file of IMA ADPCM audio data. IMA ADPCM claims 16-bit precision packed into only 4 bits, but in fact sounds no better than .vox.

IRCAM SDIF (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique Sound Description Interchange Format). Used by academic music software such as the CSound package, and the MixView sound sample editor.

This is a lossless-format (and encoding algorithm) for Apple platforms. M4A is widely used in iPod players and as a component in QuickTime media-players. The m4a codecs decoder is found in open sources – this allows third party users to open files in that format.

M4R – is a digital multimedia container format used to store audio in mono channel mode. This format is suitable for store ringtones and it is widely used by Apple iPhone for its ringtones. Needless to say that M4R and M4A formats shares many similar features.

The maud file extension is associated with the Amiga MAUD audio format, developed by Electronic Arts and Commodore in 1985. The MAUD is used for an 8 or 16 bit Amiga sound format. Most likely obsolete.

MP2 is a lossy audio compression format developed by MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group). It is widely used for audio broadcasting, while MP3 is more common for desktop and online programs. The format is supported only by some audio players, so you may need to convert it to a more popular one like MP3.

Is the most common format for storing audio. Almost any player on any platform can open mp3 files. The audio is compressed with loss of quality, but the loss is negligible for the typical user, and the file size is usually less than that of the original files.

SPHERE (SPeech HEader Resources) is a file format defined by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and is used with speech audio. SoX can read these files when they contain μ-law and PCM data. It will ignore any header information that says the data is compressed using shorten compression and will treat the data as either μ-law or PCM. This will allow SoX and the command line shorten program to be run together using pipes to encompasses the data and then pass the result to SoX for processing.

OGA is an audio extension for OGG file and it was developed by Xiph.Org Foundation. OGG is an open container format designed for streaming and may contain independent video, text and audio files. To open OGA, you need either to install an appropriate software like Vorbis, or to convert the file to a more common format.

This format is free, which apparently is one of the reasons for its popularity. The used codecs supports variable bit rates (as a default), and .ogg files usually play back easily on all platforms. All things being equal, the sound quality exceeds that of mp3 somewhat.

Opus is a lossy audio coding format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force, designed to efficiently code speech and general audio in a single format, while remaining low-latency enough for real-time interactive communication and low-complexity enough for low-end ARM3 processors. Opus replaces both Vorbis and Speex for new applications, and several blind listening tests have ranked it higher-quality than any other standard audio format at any given bitrate until transparency is reached, including MP3, AAC, and HE-AAC.

Ensoniq PARIS file format (big-endian)

PRC (Product Representation Compact) is a 3D file format that can be used to embed 3D data in a PDF file. This highly compressed format facilitates the storage of different representations of a 3D model. For example, you can save only a visual representation that consists of polygons (a tessellation), or you can save the model's exact geometry (B-rep data). Varying levels of compression can be applied to the 3D CAD data when it is converted to the PRC format using Adobe Acrobat 3D.

PVF is a special low-bandwidth ADPCM-based digital audio format for recording and storing human speech. A .pvf file contains digitally recorded speech in the PVF format. Such .pvf files were mainly used with legacy voice modems and software-based answering machines. Often, to be used with a specific modem, a .pvf file would have to be converted into the device-specific RMD format. Currently, PVF audio files can still be played with several major media players as well as converted into other formats (like WAV) with multi-format converter tools.

RA is an audio format developed by RealNetworks to use in its RealPlayer for streaming audio which means that it can be played while downloading. It uses several audio codecs, they range from the ones for delivering high-fidelity sound to those for recording low bitrate audio data. Although, the format was pretty popular and was used by many radio station to stream online, now it is technically inferior to other newer formats.

SDII (Sound Designer II, sometimes seen abbreviated as SD2) is a monophonic/stereophonic audio file format, originally developed by Digidesign for their Macintosh -based recording/editing products. It is the successor to the original monophonic Sound Designer I audio file format.

Shorten (SHN) is a file format used for compressing audio data. It is a form of data compression of files and is used to losslessly compress CD-quality audio files (44.1 kHz 16-bit stereo PCM). Shorten is no longer developed and other lossless audio codecs such as FLAC, Monkey's Audio(APE), TTA, and WavPack (WV) have become more popular. However, Shorten is still in use by some people because there are legally traded concert recordings in circulation that are encoded as Shorten files. Shorten files use the .shn file extension.

Asterisk PBX ‘signed linear’ 8khz, 16-bit signed integer, little-endian raw format.

Turtle Beach SampleVision files. SMP files are for use with the PC-DOS package SampleVision by Turtle Beach Softworks. This package is for communication to several MIDI samplers. All sample rates are supported by the package, although not all are supported by the samplers themselves. Currently loop points are ignored.

SND is a file extension for a sound file used with a variety of platforms. SND stands for SouND. SND files may contain audio data specific to a Macintosh sound resource (from Mac OS Classic), an AKAI MPC audio sample, a generic Amiga sound, or other audio file. SND files can often be opened by Apple’s Quicktime Player

SND is a file extension for a sound file used with a variety of platforms. SND stands for SouND. SND files may contain audio data specific to a Macintosh sound resource (from Mac OS Classic), an AKAI MPC audio sample, a generic Amiga sound, or other audio file. SND files can often be opened by Apple’s Quicktime Player

SND is a file extension for a sound file used with a variety of platforms. SND stands for SouND. SND files may contain audio data specific to a Macintosh sound resource (from Mac OS Classic), an AKAI MPC audio sample, a generic Amiga sound, or other audio file. SND files can often be opened by Apple’s Quicktime Player

An alias for the .u8 format

SPHERE (SPeech HEader Resources) is a file format defined by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and is used with speech audio. SoX can read these files when they contain μ-law and PCM data. It will ignore any header information that says the data is compressed using shorten compression and will treat the data as either μ-law or PCM. This will allow SoX and the command line shorten program to be run together using pipes to encompasses the data and then pass the result to SoX for processing.