Supported File Types

pvx uses python-soundfile (soundfile) backed by libsndfile for audio input/output (I/O). This means some format support is runtime/platform dependent.

I/O Behavior by Category

Category	Used by	File types
Audio input (file path)	pvxvoc, pvxfreeze, pvxharmonize, pvxmorph, pvxretune, pvxdenoise, pvxdeverb, and other audio CLIs	Any audio container supported by the active soundfile/libsndfile build (see full table below)
Audio input (stdin, -)	CLIs that accept - as input	Any container soundfile can decode from byte stream
Audio output (file path)	Audio CLIs with --output-format or inferred output extension	Any format soundfile can write in the active build
Audio output (stdout, --stdout)	Stream/pipeline mode in pvxvoc and common CLI helpers	Explicitly supported: wav, flac, aiff/aif, ogg/oga, caf
Control maps	pvxvoc --pitch-map, pvxwarp --map, pvxconform --map	csv
Time-varying per-parameter control signals	pvxvoc --stretch stretch.csv, pvxvoc --pitch-shift-ratio pitch.json, pvxvoc --n-fft nfft.csv, pvx stream ... --stretch stretch.csv	csv, json
Pitch tracking map output	pvx pitch-track / hps-pitch-track	csv
Render manifest	pvxvoc --manifest-json	json
Documentation output	docs generators	html, pdf

Full Audio Container List (Current Build)

The following formats are reported by the current local soundfile/libsndfile runtime:

Extension	Format
aiff	AIFF (Apple/SGI)
au	AU (Sun/NeXT)
avr	AVR (Audio Visual Research)
caf	CAF (Apple Core Audio File)
flac	FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)
htk	HTK (HMM Tool Kit)
ircam	SF (Berkeley/IRCAM/CARL)
mat4	MAT4 (GNU Octave 2.0 / Matlab 4.2)
mat5	MAT5 (GNU Octave 2.1 / Matlab 5.0)
mp3	MPEG-1/2 Audio
mpc2k	MPC (Akai MPC 2k)
nist	WAV (NIST Sphere)
ogg	OGG (OGG Container format)
paf	PAF (Ensoniq PARIS)
pvf	PVF (Portable Voice Format)
raw	RAW (header-less)
rf64	RF64 (RIFF 64)
sd2	SD2 (Sound Designer II)
sds	SDS (Midi Sample Dump Standard)
svx	IFF (Amiga IFF/SVX8/SV16)
voc	VOC (Creative Labs)
w64	W64 (SoundFoundry WAVE 64)
wav	WAV (Microsoft)
wavex	WAVEX (Microsoft)
wve	WVE (Psion Series 3)
xi	XI (FastTracker 2)

Verify on Your Machine

Use this command to print the exact formats available in your environment:

python3 - <<'PY'
import soundfile as sf
for ext, name in sorted(sf.available_formats().items()):
    print(f"{ext.lower():<8} {name}")
PY

Attribution