• The WAVE Format The WAVE (waveform) format is developed by IBM and Microsoft.

• It is supported by all computers running Windows, and by all the most popular web browsers .

• Sounds stored in the WAVE format have the extension .wav

• The WAVE Format The WAVE (waveform) format is developed by IBM and Microsoft used for storing an audio bit stream.

• WAV file can hold both compressed and uncompressed audio.

• It is supported by all computers running Windows, and by all the most popular web browsers .

• Sounds stored in the WAVE format have the extension .wav

Fig: Wave File Format

• The header is the beginning of a WAV (RIFF) file. The header is used to provide specifications on the file type, sample rate, sample size and bit size of the file, as well as its overall length.

• The header of a WAV (RIFF) file is 44 bytes long and has the following format:

• Chunk ID: Marks the file as a riff file. Characters are each 1 byte long. Contains the letters "RIFF" in ASCII form.

• Chunk Size: This is the size of the entire file in bytes.

• Format: this field contains the letters “wave” (wave form audio file). Contains the letters "WAVE“.

• WAVE file contains two types of chunks: Format chunk and Data chunk

• “fmt” Subchunk: It contains information about how waveform is stored, how it could be played, what compression techniques are used. Contains the letters "fmt “.

• NumChannels: 1= mono sound, 2 = stereo sound.

• Sample Rate: number of samples per second (Hertz). CD-Audio has a sample rate of 44,100. This means that 1 second of audio has 44,100 samples.

• AudioFormat: This field describes the type of compression format used.

• Byte Rate: this field indicated how many bytes of wave data must be send to DAC per second in order to play the wave file.

• Bits per sample: this field specifies number of bits used to define each sample. This value is usually 8, 16, 24 or 32.

• Data Chunk – “data” this field indicates the size of the sound information and contains the actual sound data.

• Example, here are the opening 72 bytes of a WAVE file with bytes shown as hexadecimal numbers:

52 49 46 46 24 08 00 00 57 41 56 45 66 6d 74 20 10 00 00 00 01 00 02 00 22 56 00 00 88 58 01 00 04 00 10 00 64 61 74 61 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 24 17 1e f3 3c 13 3c 14 16 f9 18 f9 34 e7 23 a6 3c f2 24 f2 11 ce 1a 0d