NeXT/Sun soundfile format

OFFSET : 
SIZE      field name    description

0 : 4 magic Identifies the file as a NeXT/Sun soundfile. must be equal to SND_MAGIC (0x2e736e64) which is equivalent to the ASCII characters ".snd". It is used for type checking and byte ordering information. Big endian files have a magic number of ".snd", while little endian files would have "dns." Probably not a good idea to create little endian files. 4 : 4 dataLocation Offset from start of file to the raw sound data Note that the offset is from 1 rather than 0, so that the minimum dataLocation offset is 29, not 28. 8 : 4 dataSize Number of bytes of data in the raw sound data. 12 : 4 dataFormat NeXT data format codes. User-defined formats should be greater than 255. Negative format numbers are reserved. Defined codes are listed in <sound/soundstruct.h> on NeXT computers. Common formats include: SND_FORMAT_MULAW_8 (1) SND_FORMAT_LINEAR_16 (3) SND_FORMAT_FLOAT (6) SND_FORMAT_DOUBLE (7) 16 : 4 samplingRate The sampling rate. Hardware supported sampling rates are (stored as integers in field): SND_RATE_CODEC (8012.8210513) SND_RATE_LOW (22050.0) SND_RATE_HIGH (44100.0) SND_RATE_LOW_PC (11025.0) 20 : 4 channelCount The number of channels in the soundfile. Each channel's data is interlaced with data from other channels. For example, a stereo file which has two channels will store data as: sample1 left, sample1 right, sample2 left, sample2 right, etc. 24 : 4+X info[4] Comments relating to the sound, or user defined data fields. Must be at least 4 bytes long, but can be as long as desired, since the data starts at the offset in bytes from the beginning of the soundfile according to the number in the dataLocation field. Warning: for some sound playing programs, the info field must be even. 28+X: * data the actual sound data bytes. Size is specified in the dataSize field.

Notes:





NeXT Header files for sound

These files are found in the directory /usr/include/sound on NeXTStep computers.









craig@ccrma.stanford.edu