SoX cheat sheet

General commands

• General usage.

$ sox [general_flags] [input_flags][infile] [output_flags][outfile] [effects...]

• Help on arguments for a particular effect.

$ sox --help-effect reverb

• Display general information (samplerate, bit depth, duration, ...)

$ sox --info input.wav

• Process the audio contents to calculate properties such as RMS.

$ sox input.wav -n stats

• Convert to 8kHz, 1-channel wav.

$ sox input.wav -r 8000 -c 1 output.wav

• Convert to mp3.

$ sox input.wav output.mp3

• Convert to mp3 with specified bitrate in kbps.

$ sox input.wav -C 256 output.mp3

• Convert from a .raw file of known format to a wav file.

$ sox -r 44100 -e signed-integer -b 16 chirp-raw-audio.raw chirp-raw-audio.wav

Synthesizing audio

• Generate 1 second of white noise.

$ sox -n output.wav synth 1 noise

• Generate a 1-second sine tone.

$ sox -n output.wav synth 1 sine 440

• Generate a 10-second sine sweep.

$ sox -n output.wav synth 10 sine 0:20000

• Exponential sine sweep

$ sox -n -r 44100 sine-sweep.wav synth 10 sine 5/22050

• Dirac impulse

$ sox -n -r 44100 impulse.wav synth 1s square pad 0 44099s

Playing audio

• Play an audio file through the default system audio output.

$ play input.wav

• Play synthesized audio.

$ play -n synth sine 440 trim 0 1 gain -12

Combining audio

• Combine two files by concatenation.

$ sox a.wav b.wav c.wav concatenated.wav

• Combine two files by mixing their contents.

$ sox -m a.wav b.wav c.wav mixed.wav

Modifying audio

• Reduce level by 12dB

$ sox speech.wav output.wav gain -12

• Crop to the first 1 second of the file.

$ sox speech.wav output.wav trim 0 1

• Reverse the contents.

$ sox speech.wav output.wav reverse

• Normalise the contents to 0dBFS.

$ sox speech.wav output.wav norm

Effects

• Equaliser (-6dB @ 100Hz, -24dB @ 8000Hz)

$ sox speech.wav output.wav bass -6 100 treble -24 8000

• Add room modelling reverb.

$ sox speech.wav output.wav reverb 50 50 100

• Trim digital silence from start and end.

$ sox input.wav trimmed/output.wav silence 1 0.1 0 1 0.1 0

Visualisation

• Generate a spectrogram (output to spectrogram.png)

$ sox speech.wav -n spectrogram

• Merge two audio files into one:

$ sox -m ${input_audiofile1} ${input_audiofile2} ${output_audiofile}

• Trim an audio file to the specified times:

$ sox ${input_audiofile} ${output_audiofile} trim ${start} ${end}

• Normalize an audio file (adjust volume to the maximum peak level, without clipping):

$ sox --norm ${input_audiofile} ${output_audiofile}

• Reverse and save an audio file:

$ sox ${input_audiofile} ${output_audiofile} reverse

• Print statistical data of an audio file:

$ sox ${input_audiofile} -n stat

Filters

• Increase the volume of an audio file by 2x:

$ sox -v 2.0 ${input_audiofile} ${output_audiofile}

• Changing sample rate of a file

$ sox ${input_file} -r 16000 ${output_file}

• Changing the Number of Channels (For example: convert mono audio files to stereo)

$ sox ${mono_wav} -c 2 ${stereo_wav}

• Generate Different Types of Sounds ${len} - length of audio to synthesize, hh:mm:ss.frac ${freq} - frequencies at the beginning/end of synthesis in Hz ${type} is one of sine, square, triangle, sawtooth, trapezium, exp, [white]noise, pinknoise, brown-noise sox -n synth ${len} ${type} ${freq}

$ sox -r 8000 -n output.wav synth 3 sine 300-3300

• Speed up the Sound in an Audio File

$ sox input.wav output.wav speed 2.0

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