SoX
| Website | http://sox.sourceforge.net/ |
|---|---|
| License | GPL |
| OS | GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows |
| Media | Audio |
| Format | AIFF |
| Interface | Command-line interface, |
| Wikipedia | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoX |
Installation
Mac/Windows
Specific installers for Mac & Windows can be found here.
Debian/Linux
apt-get install sox
Testing if sox is installed
sox installs the following commands:
- sox
- play
- rec
Typing one of them should be a quick way to test if sox is installed. To check the version:
sox --version
sox is a handy command-line tool for manipulating, filtering, and generating audio.
Help
Actually, there's quite a bit of help available from sox itself, it's just a little spread out, try one or all of the following:
man sox
man soxexam
sox
sox --help-effect all
In case they're not installed, you can also check out the man pages online: sox soxexam
Displaying information about an audio file
sox -V clap.wav -n
displays in my case...
sox: SoX v14.0.1
Input File : 'clap.wav'
Sample Size : 16-bit (2 bytes)
Sample Encoding: signed (2's complement)
Channels : 1
Sample Rate : 44100
Duration : 00:00.50 = 22050 samples = 37.5 CDDA sectors
Endian Type : little
Reverse Nibbles: no
Reverse Bits : no
Or use the "stat" effect:
sox clap.wav -e stat
displays
Samples read: 22050
Length (seconds): 0.500000
Scaled by: 2147483647.0
Maximum amplitude: 0.999969
Minimum amplitude: -0.999878
Midline amplitude: 0.000046
Mean norm: 0.015108
Mean amplitude: 0.000009
RMS amplitude: 0.047986
Maximum delta: 0.552368
Minimum delta: 0.000000
Mean delta: 0.005487
RMS delta: 0.017184
Rough frequency: 2513
Volume adjustment: 1.000
Generating tones or noise
Generating a tone & playing it immediately:
play -c1 -r8000 -n synth 0.25 sine 220 vol 0.7
play -c1 -r8000 -n synth 0.25 noise vol 0.7
Using -n removes the need for an input file.
sox -c1 -r8000 -n beep.wav synth 0.25 sine 220 vol 0.7
sox -c1 -r8000 -n sweep_up.wav synth 0.25 sine 220-440 vol 0.7
sox -c1 -r8000 -n -t wav sweep_down.wav synth 0.25 sine 440-220 vol 0.7
sox -c1 -r8000 -n ch.wav synth 0.25 noise vol 0.7
sox -c1 -r8000 -n sweep_up_long.wav synth 2.0 sine 220-1000 vol 0.7
sox -c1 -r8000 -n sweep_down_long.wav synth 2.0 sine 1000-220 vol 0.7
sox -c1 -r8000 -n bleep.wav synth 0.5 square 330 vol 0.7
To send output to stdout, in place of the filename, and specify your "--type" (since sox can't guess by the filename, here it's "wav"):
sox -c1 -r8000 -n -t wav - synth 0.25 sine 220 vol 0.7 > beep.wav
Generating "drum" hits in various colors, 0.2 secs with a quick decay, using stdout / file redirection.
sox -c2 -r44100 -n -t wav - synth 0.2 pinknoise vol 1.0 fade l 0 0.2 0.19 > pink.wav
sox -c2 -r44100 -n -t wav - synth 0.2 brownnoise vol 1.0 fade l 0 0.2 0.19 > brown.wav
sox -c2 -r44100 -n -t wav - synth 0.2 noise vol 1.0 fade l 0 0.2 0.19 > white.wav
Generating silence using a noise generator at zero volume (must be other ways to achieve the same):
sox -c2 -r44100 -n silence.wav synth 0.2 noise vol 0.0
melody with bend
play -n synth 60 sin 300 gain 1 bend 3,180,.25 6,20,.53 12,-520,.3
Pluck
play -n synth 1 pluck E2 sox -n e2.wav synth 1 pluck E2
for n in E2 A2 D3 G3 B3 E4
do
# play -n synth 1 pluck $n
sox -c2 -r44100 -n pluck_$n.ogg synth 1 pluck $n
done
Manipulations
changing the file speed
(does not preserve the duration)
sox In.ogg In_slow.ogg speed 0.45
sox In.ogg In_fast.ogg speed 1.5
Working with "raw audio"
Working with raw files allows audio to get appended together; here sox is used to take a bunch of wavs, make them raw, send them all to stdout, the repackage them as a wav file. In the examples listed below, the rate used is "CD-Quality" 44kHz, 16-bit stereo.
Converting a sound file to raw audio
sox source.wav --rate 44100 --bits 16 --channels 2 --encoding signed-integer source.raw
Converting raw back to audio
sox --rate 44100 --bits 16 --channels 2 --encoding signed-integer new.raw new.wav
Extracting audio
Use the trim filter. For example, to extract 1 second of audio starting at 0.250 secs from an OGG audio file, saving the result as out.wav:
sox defenders_dick_mka.ogg out.wav trim 00:00:00.250 00:00:01.000
In Linux, you can use the play command to "preview" your cut before you make it:
play in.wav out.wav trim 0.7
the to "perform it, simply change play to sox:
sox in.wav out.wav trim 0.7
Batch processing
(for file in *; do sox "$file" -t .raw -r 44100 -sw -c 2 -; done) | \
sox -t .raw -r 44100 -sw -c 2 - -t .wav newfile.wav
source: [1]
Script to cat two wavs together using sox/raw format
#!/bin/sh
sox $1 -r 44100 -c 2 -s -2 /tmp/$$-1.raw
sox $2 -r 44100 -c 2 -s -2 /tmp/$$-2.raw
cat /tmp/$$-1.raw /tmp/$$-2.raw > /tmp/$$.raw
sox -r 44100 -c 2 -s -2 /tmp/$$.raw $3
rm /tmp/$$*.raw
(changed -w to -2 to work on mac, new version of sox?!)
Compand
compand 0.3,1 6:-70,-60,-20 -5 -90 0.2
Source: https://sourceforge.net/p/sox/mailman/message/23427259/