I am writing a program to parse a WAV file header and print the information to the screen. Before writing the program i am doing some research
hexdump -n 48 sound_file_8000hz.wav
00000000 52 49 46 46 bc af 01 00 57 41 56 45 66 6d 74 20 |RIFF....WAVEfmt |
00000010 10 00 00 00 01 00 01 00 >40 1f 00 00< 40 1f 00 00 |........@...@...|
00000020 01 00 08 00 64 61 74 61 98 af 01 00 81 80 81 80 |....data........|
hexdump -n 48 sound_file_44100hz.wav
00000000 52 49 46 46 c4 ea 1a 00 57 41 56 45 66 6d 74 20 |RIFF....WAVEfmt |
00000010 10 00 00 00 01 00 02 00 >44 ac 00 00< 10 b1 02 00 |........D.......|
00000020 04 00 10 00 64 61 74 61 a0 ea 1a 00 00 00 00 00 |....data........|
The part between > and < in both files are the sample rate.
How does “40 1f 00 00” translate to 8000Hz and “44 ac 00 00” to 44100Hz? Information like number of channels and audio format can be read directly from the dump. I found a Python
script called WavHeader that parses the sample rate correctly in both files. This is the core of the script:
bufHeader = fileIn.read(38)
# Verify that the correct identifiers are present
if (bufHeader[0:4] != "RIFF") or \
(bufHeader[12:16] != "fmt "):
logging.debug("Input file not a standard WAV file")
return
# endif
stHeaderFields = {'ChunkSize' : 0, 'Format' : '',
'Subchunk1Size' : 0, 'AudioFormat' : 0,
'NumChannels' : 0, 'SampleRate' : 0,
'ByteRate' : 0, 'BlockAlign' : 0,
'BitsPerSample' : 0, 'Filename': ''}
# Parse fields
stHeaderFields['ChunkSize'] = struct.unpack('<L', bufHeader[4:8])[0]
stHeaderFields['Format'] = bufHeader[8:12]
stHeaderFields['Subchunk1Size'] = struct.unpack('<L', bufHeader[16:20])[0]
stHeaderFields['AudioFormat'] = struct.unpack('<H', bufHeader[20:22])[0]
stHeaderFields['NumChannels'] = struct.unpack('<H', bufHeader[22:24])[0]
stHeaderFields['SampleRate'] = struct.unpack('<L', bufHeader[24:28])[0]
stHeaderFields['ByteRate'] = struct.unpack('<L', bufHeader[28:32])[0]
stHeaderFields['BlockAlign'] = struct.unpack('<H', bufHeader[32:34])[0]
stHeaderFields['BitsPerSample'] = struct.unpack('<H', bufHeader[34:36])[0]
I do not understand how this can extract the corret sample rates, when i cannot using hexdump?
I am using information about the WAV file format from this page:
The “40 1F 00 00” bytes equate to an integer whose hexadecimal value is 00001F40 (remember that the integers are stored in a WAVE file in the little endian format). A value of 00001F40 in hexadecimal equates to a decimal value of 8000.
Similarly, the “44 AC 00 00” bytes equate to an integer whose hexadecimal value is 0000AC44. A value of 0000AC44 in hexadecimal equates to a decimal value of 44100.