Wav files

J

Jack Hammer

New member
Exactly what is a wav file and does anyone know how they are made, transferred etc. particularly in Digital Performer.

Also, how does one load a wav file onto an MPC3000XL?
 
A WAV file is just a particular way of storing audio data in a binary computer file. There are many others -- AIFF is particularly common on the Mac platform -- but WAV is the most common.

They are made by running a digitized audio signal into a software application that can package the data up into this format. Basically any modern recording program will do this.

They are transferred exactly the same way as any other computer file is.

As to the MPC thing, I don't know how specifically to do what you ask with that device...
 
Do you really really want to know!

A Bastardized Standard

The WAVE format is sort of a bastardized standard that was concocted by too many "cooks" who didn't properly coordinate the addition of "ingredients" to the "soup". Unlike with the AIFF standard which was mostly designed by a small, coordinated group, the WAVE format has had all manner of much-too-independent, uncoordinated aberrations inflicted upon it. The net result is that there are far too many chunks that may be found in a WAVE file -- many of them duplicating the same information found in other chunks (but in an unnecessarily different way) simply because there have been too many programmers who took too many liberties with unilaterally adding their own additions to the WAVE format without properly coming to a concensus of what everyone else needed (and therefore it encouraged an "every man for himself" attitude toward adding things to this "standard").
One example is the Instrument chunk versus the Sampler chunk. Another example is the Note versus Label chunks in an Associated Data List. I don't even want to get into the totally irresponsible proliferation of compressed formats. (ie, It seems like everyone and his pet Dachshound has come up with some compressed version of storing wave data -- like we need 100 different ways to do that). Furthermore, there are lots of inconsistencies, for example how 8-bit data is unsigned, but 16-bit data is signed.

http://www.borg.com/~jglatt/tech/wave.htm
:cool:
 
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