WAV

Waveform Audio File Format is an audio format with a .wav file extension, used by all of Valve's engines. It is required for lipsynced dialogue and looped sounds without a custom audio backend.

GoldSrc supports uncompressed 8-bit or 16-bit PCM, although lip-synched audio must be 8-bit. It supports sample rates of 11025 Hz or 22050 Hz; other sample rates can sometimes be used, but they will be resampled to 22050 Hz before playback.

Source supports uncompressed 8-bit and 16-bit PCM as well as compressed 4-bit Microsoft ADPCM. It supports sample rates at 11025 Hz, 22050 Hz, and 44100 Hz; files at other sample rates, such as 32000 Hz, will not play.

Bit rates

WAV files have a consistent bitrate depending upon their sample rate, bit depth, and channel count. The following is a table with the bitrates of mono WAV files; double the values below for stereo WAV files.

Sample Rate	16-bit PCM	8-bit PCM	4-bit ADPCM	Quality
11025 Hz	176.4 kbps	88.2 kbps	44.1 kbps	Used by most sound effects
22050 Hz	352.8 kbps	176.4 kbps	88.2 kbps	Max sample rate of sound effects
44100 Hz	705.6 kbps	352.8 kbps	176.4 kbps	CD quality

External links

• WAV on Wikipedia