Table of Contents

•Overview
•Data Formats
•File Structure
  Wave File Header
  Wave File Chunks
    Format Chunk - "fmt "
    Data Chunk - "data"
    Fact Chunk - "fact"
    Cue Chunk - "cue "
    Playlist Chunk - "plst"
    Associated Data List Chunk - "list"
    Label Chunk - "labl"
    Labeled Text Chunk - "ltxt"
    Note Chunk - "note"
    Sample Chunk - "smpl"
    Instrument Chunk - "inst"
•Format Variations 

Overview

The Wave file format is Windows' native file format for storing digital audio data. It has become one of the most widely supported digital audio file formats on the PC due to the popularity of Windows and the huge number of programs written for the platform. Almost every modern program that can open and/or save digital audio supports this file format, making it both extremely useful and a virtual requirement for software developers to understand. The following specification gives a detailed description of the structure and inner workings of this format.

Data Formats

Since the Wave file format is native to Windows and therefor Intel processors, all data values are stored in Little-Endian (least significant byte first) order.

Strings
Wave files may contain strings of text for specifying cue point labels, notes, etc. Strings are stored in a format where the first byte specifies the number of following ASCII text bytes in the string. The following bytes are of course the ASCII character bytes that make up the text string. Pascal programmers will notice that this is the same format used for Pascal strings.

7

'e'

'x'

'a'

'm'

'p'

'l'

'e'

Wave String Format Example

File Structure

Basic Wave File Layout Chunk ID "RIFF" Chunk Data Size RIFF Type ID "WAVE" Chunk ID "fmt " Chunk Data Size Sample Format Info Chunk ID "data" Chunk Data Size Digital Audio Samples Chunk Header Chunk Data Bytes

Wave files use the standard RIFF structure which groups the files contents (sample format, digital audio samples, etc.) into separate chunks, each containing it's own header and data bytes. The chun