The following is supposedly the sound format used by Sun and Next
machines:

[ From: mrose@dbc.mtview.ca.us (Marshall Rose) ]

Audio data is encoded in three parts: a header, containing fields that
describe the audio encoding format; a variable-length information field,
in which, for instance, ASCII annotation may be stored; and, the actual
encoded audio.  The header and data fields are written using big-endian
ordering.

The header part consists of six 32-bit quantities, in this order:

longword	field		description
--------	-----		-----------
    0		magic number	the value 0x2e736e64 (ASCII ".snd")

    1		data offset	the offset, in octets, to the data part.
				The minimum valid number is 24 (decimal).

    2		data size	the size in octets, of the data part.
				If unknown, the value 0xffffffff should
				be used.

    3		encoding	the data encoding format:

				    value	format
				      1		8-bit ISDN u-law
				      2		8-bit linear PCM [REF-PCM]
				      3		16-bit linear PCM
				      4		24-bit linear PCM
				      5		32-bit linear PCM
				      6		32-bit IEEE floating point
				      7		64-bit IEEE floating point
				     23		8-bit ISDN u-law compressed
						using the CCITT G.721 ADPCM
						voice data encoding scheme.

    4		sample rate	the number of samples/second (e.g., 8000)

    5		channels	the number of interleaved channels (e.g., 1)


The information part, consists of 0 or more octets, and starts 24 octets
after the beginning of the header part. The length of the information
part is calculated by subtracting 24 (decimal) from the data offset
field in the header part.
--
 Bill Janssen      janssen@parc.xerox.com      (415) 812-4763
 Xerox Palo Alto Research Center      FAX: (415) 812-4777
 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California   94304