Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections

The Library of Congress Recommended Formats Statement (RFS) lists WAVE as a Preferred format for Audio - Media-independent (digital). The RFS does not specify a version of WAVE. See also WAVE_BWF_1.

Widely adopted. With LPCM encoding, a preferred or recommended format for sound in many long-term archives. Examples include NARA's Transfer Guidance, Libraries and Archives Canada, and France's National Computer Center for Higher Education (CINES).

Metadata can be placed in the INFO chunk (aka "LIST" chunk with a list type of "INFO") associated with all RIFF files. Additional metadata is a feature of the bext (Broadcast Audio Extension) associated with WAVE_LPCM_BWF (Broadcast WAVE Audio File Format). Additional metadata chunks have been defined: aXML, iXML, and the CART/Audio Delivery Extension to BWF, from the Audio Engineering Society in AES46-2002.

Accessibility Features

WAVE files have moderate support for accessibility features. Closed captions and transcriptions can be embedded within the Labeled Text chunk (ltxt) [within the Associated Data Chunk] and identified as such with the 'Purpose' label. The specification includes the suggested Purpose value of 'capt' for closed-caption text and FADGI defines, in Guidelines for Embedding Metadata in Broadcast WAVE Files, the Purpose value of 'tran' for transcription. Overall, the optional Associated Data Chunk fields allows a mechanism to provide context for the audio data along the timeline which is helpful but it is not expressly designed for accessibility impacts.

In common practice, typically WAVE and other audio file content is supported by external caption and subtitle formats such as WebVTT. See W3C's Making Audio and Video Media Accessible for more general information about accessible sound and moving image media.

From the Wikipedia article RF64 (consulted April 25, 2022): "RF64 is a BWF-compatible multichannel file format enabling file sizes to exceed 4 GB. It has been accepted as the ITU recommendation ITU-R BS.2088. The file format is designed to meet the requirements for multichannel sound in broadcasting and audio archiving. It is based on the Microsoft RIFF/WAVE format and Wave Format Extensible for multichannel parameters. Additions are made to the basic specification to allow for more than 4 GB file sizes when needed (the new maximum filesize is now approximately 16 exabytes). . . . In its basic form, the 32-bit chunk size field at offset 4 in the file is set to -1 (0xFFFFFFFF), and immediately following that a new 'DS64' chunk is inserted (before the FMT chunk). This new DS64 chunk will contain the 64-bit sizes of the DATA chunk(s), using a simple sequential table mechanism to point to additional DATA chunks. The first 4 bytes of the file are then changed from 'RIFF' to 'RF64'. . . . An RF64 file with a bext chunk becomes an MBWF-file. The terms ‘RF64’ and ‘MBWF’ can then be considered synonymous.

According to an exchange on the ARSCLIST on March 8 2021 (Subject: Re: MIME Type for wav files), Dave Rice explains why there's no audio/wav media type registered for WAVE files: "In the IETF, the registration of “audio/wav" was taken up by the vpim (Voice Profile for Internet Mail) working group which has concluded their work. As part of the working group, the registration status was discussed in their mailing list as well as Charles Eliot’s wav/audio registration draft." The document had ongoing registration issues that were left unresolved so workarounds were used, especially with enabling browser support, to avoid continuing with a cumbersome registration process.

Format created by Microsoft and introduced with Windows 3.1. Adopted as basis for European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Broadcast Wave standard.

With Windows 2000, Microsoft introduced a WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE header which specifies multiple audio channel data (surround sound) along with speaker positions. This enhancement provided for custom extensions to the format chunk. Ambiguity relating to sample types and container sizes in the standard WAV format was also addressed.