Sustainability of Digital Formats
Planning for Library of Congress Collections
Sustainability of Digital Formats
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| Introduction | Sustainability Factors | Content Categories | Format Descriptions | Contact | |
| Full name | WAVE. Waveform Audio File Format |
| Description | File format for audio. Wrapper file format that can incorporate an audio bitstream with other data chunks. The default bitstream encoding is the Microsoft Pulse Code Modulation (LPCM) format. |
| Relationship to other formats | |
| Subtype of | RIFF, Resource Interchange File Format for Windows 3.1 |
| Has subtype | WAVE_LPCM, WAVE Audio File Format with LPCM Audio |
| Has subtype | WAVE_LPCM_BWF, Broadcast WAVE Audio File Format |
| May contain | LPCM, Linear Pulse Code Modulation audio encoding |
| May contain | µ-Law, µ-Law (Mu-Law) Compressed Sound Format |
| May contain | A-Law, A-Law Compressed Sound Format |
| May contain | DPCM, Differential PCM Sound Format |
| May contain | ADPCM, Adaptive Differential PCM Sound Format |
| LC experience or existing holdings | See WAVE_LPCM |
| LC preference | See WAVE_LPCM |
| Disclosure | Fully documented. Proprietary format developed by Microsoft and IBM as part of the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) for Windows 3.1. Incorporated into Broadcast Wave standard. |
| Documentation | Multimedia Programming Interface and Data Specifications 1.0. IBM Corporation and Microsoft Corporation, August 1991. Available online, e.g., at http://www.tactilemedia.com/info/MCI_Control_Info.html Multimedia Data Standards Update April 15, 1994 at www.tsp.ece.mcgill.ca/MMSP/Documents/AudioFormats/WAVE/Docs/RIFFNEW.pdf |
| Adoption | Widely adopted, both for exchange of broadcast audio and for telephony Broadcast: Adopted by the European Broadcast Union as the basis for Broadcast Wave (BWF). BWF recommended as the preferred format for the delivery of music recordings to record companies in the Draft Recommendation for Delivery of Recorded Music Projects developed by the Delivery Specifications Committee of the Producer's and Engineer's Wing of the Recording Academy (National Academy of the Recording Arts and Sciences). BWF specified in AES31-3-1999, the Audio Engineering Society's specification for simple project interchange. |
| Licensing and patent claims | None |
| Transparency | Depends on audio codec employed for bitstream encoding (which may incorporate compression); see LPCM, µ-Law, A-Law, DPCM, and ADPCM. |
| Self-documentation | Metadata can be placed in the INFO chunk (aka "LIST" chunk with a list type of "INFO") associated with all RIFF files. Additional metadata is a feature of the bext (Broadcast Audio Extension) associated with WAVE_LPCM_BWF (Broadcast WAVE Audio File Format); additional data is defined for the CART/Audio Delivery Extension to BWF proposed to the Audio Engineering Society. |
| External dependencies | None |
| Technical protection considerations | None |
| Normal rendering for sound | Excellent. |
| Fidelity (support for high audio resolution) | Varies according to encoding; see LPCM, µ-Law, A-Law, DPCM, and ADPCM. |
| Support for multiple sound channels | Requires use of WAVE Format Extensible. |
| Functionality beyond normal sound rendering | Not applicable |
| Tag type | Value | Note |
| Filename Extension | wav | |
| Internet Media Type | audio/wav audio/wave audio/x-pn-wav | Selected from The File Extension Source. |
| Internet Media Type | audio/x-wav | From LC web server configuration (Apache) of 2004-04-28. |
| Internet Media Type | audio/vnd.wave | From http://www.iana.org/assignments/wave-avi-codec-registry. No examples found in IANA MIME Media Types. |
| Magic numbers | Hex: 52 49 46 46 xx xx xx xx 57 41 56 45 66 6D 74 20 ASCII: RIFF....WAVEfmt | From Gary Kessler's File Signatures Table. |
| Microsoft WAVE format registry | Varies according to the audio codec selected; see the Microsoft registry. |
| General | |
| History | Format created by Microsoft and introduced with Windows 3.1. Adopted as basis for European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Broadcast Wave standard. |
URLs
• Multimedia Programming Interface and Data Specifications 1.0, issued as a joint design by IBM Corporation and Microsoft Corporation, August 1991 (http://www.kk.iij4u.or.jp/~kondo/wave/mpidata.txt). Also available from http://www.tactilemedia.com/info/MCI_Control_Info.html and other sites.
• WAVEFORMAT (structure) from Microsoft. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/multimed/htm/_win32_waveformat_str.asp)
• Multimedia Data Standards Update, April 15, 1994. (http://www.tsp.ece.mcgill.ca/MMSP/Documents/AudioFormats/WAVE/Docs/RIFFNEW.pdf)
• Multiple Channel Audio Data and WAVE Files, updated: December 4, 2001. Describes extension of WAVE format to handle multiple channels of audio. (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/audio/multichaud.mspx)
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URLs
• http://www.tsp.ece.mcgill.ca/MMSP/Documents/AudioFormats/WAVE/WAVE.html. Site includes pointers to and local copies of significant documents.
• http://www.ebu.ch/departments/technical/pmc/pmc_bwf.html
• http://www.ebu.ch/tech_32/tech_t3285_v1.pdf
• http://www.grammy.com/pe_wing/guidelines/DeliveryRecs.pdf
• http://www.broadcastpapers.com/radio/cartchunk01.htm
• http://www.sonicspot.com/guide/wavefiles.html
• http://www.borg.com/~jglatt/tech/wave.htm
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