Sound files 3. Files that Praat can read

Praat can read five types of standard sound files in several formats, and a number of proprietary types of sound files as well.

## Standard sound files

The Open menu contains two commands for opening sound files:

  • With Read from file..., you read the entire file into memory. A Sound object will appear in the list. This is appropriate if your sound is not too long to fit into memory. The advantage of having a Sound object is that you can perform analysis on it directly.
  • With Open long sound file..., you open a sound file that is too long to read into memory completely (i.e. several hours long). A LongSound object will appear in the list. You will typically choose View to view the contents of this sound and analyse it. Praat will only read as much of the file into memory as is needed to play or display parts of it.

Both commands understand the following six standard audio file formats:

  • WAV:
  • linear 16-bit little-endian
  • 8-bit μ-law
  • 8-bit A-law
  • linear 8-bit unsigned
  • AIFF or AIFC:
  • linear 16-bit big-endian
  • linear 8-bit signed
  • NeXT/Sun (.au):
  • linear 16-bit big-endian
  • 8-bit μ-law
  • 8-bit A-law
  • linear 8-bit signed
  • NIST:
  • linear 16-bit little-endian
  • linear 16-bit big-endian
  • 8-bit μ-law
  • 8-bit A-law
  • linear 8-bit signed
  • FLAC:
  • 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit
  • all sampling frequencies
  • MP3:
  • all constant or variable bitrates
  • Shorten:
  • 8-bit A-law

### Links to this page

- Sound files