The Audio File Library currently supports 13 of the commonly found audio
file formats, i.e., is able to recognize, read, and write sample data and
header information to and from files in these formats. It is important
not to confuse _s_a_m_p_l_e or _a_u_d_i_o _d_a_t_a _f_o_r_m_a_t_s with _f_i_l_e _f_o_r_m_a_t_s. The
former refers to the bit-wise organization of the sound samples in the
file, i.e., whether the format is 8-bit integer or 16-bit unsigned, etc.
Audio file format refers to the structure of the _a_u_d_i_o _f_i_l_e _h_e_a_d_e_r, the
chunk of on-disk data which preceeds the samples and which provides
information about the file to the audio program. A single audio file
format may support a large variety of sample formats.
The AAAAuuuuddddiiiioooo IIIInnnntttteeeerrrrcccchhhhaaaannnnggggeeee FFFFiiiilllleeee FFFFoooorrrrmmmmaaaatttt ((((AAAAIIIIFFFFFFFF)))) was created by Apple Computer,
Inc., in order to create a format for digital sound which conformed to
the "EA IFF 85" _S_t_a_n_d_a_r_d _f_o_r _I_n_t_e_r_c_h_a_n_g_e _F_o_r_m_a_t _F_i_l_e_s developed by
Electronic Arts. It consists of a variable-length header followed by a
contiguous block of binary data representing the sound samples.
The EEEExxxxtttteeeennnnddddeeeedddd AAAAuuuuddddiiiioooo IIIInnnntttteeeerrrrcccchhhhaaaannnnggggeeee FFFFiiiilllleeee FFFFoooorrrrmmmmaaaatttt ((((AAAAIIIIFFFFFFFF----CCCC)))), also designed
by Apple Computer, Inc., is based on the the Audio IFF format (see
above). In addition to the above specifications, the AIFF-C format
supports a variety of compressed data formats. These are all
described in the aaaaffffGGGGeeeettttCCCCoooommmmpppprrrreeeessssssssiiiioooonnnn(3dm) man page. Currently, every
compression scheme supported by the Audio File Library is also
supported by the AIFF-C format with the exception of IMA DVI ADPCM