Reading/writing sound files

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

Hi all,

For those who don't know me, I am the main author/maintainer of
libsndfile:

    http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/

a library for reading/writing sound files. The library is released
under the LGPL, is cross platform (*nix, windows and mac osx) and
each release is tested on x86, x86-64 and powerpc CPUs.

I have also been using octave myself since 1995, mainly for 
audio signal processing purposes.

I am also aware that octave already has a couple of scripts for 
reading and writing WAV files (wavread/wavwrite) but those scripts
are limited. They also don't support numerous other file formats
that are supported by libsndfile.

Now it certainly would be possible to add support for some of these
formats to octave, but others like FLAC (flac.sf.net) and Ogg/Vorbis
(currently nearing completion) are obviously much more difficult.

In light of the above, what would people thing on making libsndfile
an optional dependancy of octave and providing octave with a nice
way of reading/writing any format supported by libsndfile.

I'm even willing to put up my hand to do the work. All I would need
is a tiny amount of guidance on how the libsndfile functionality is
exposed to the user.

Is this a a good idea? Something worthwhile?

Cheers,
Erik
-- 
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Erik de Castro Lopo
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UNIX *is* user-friendly, just picky about who it
chooses for friends!