Knock my SoX off

SoX, which stands for Sound eXchange, was started by Lance Norskog as a program to convert from one format to the other. Then Chris Bagwell picked up the project and added a lot of features. SoX usually comes standard on major Linux distributions. You should be able to choose it when you install. If not, there's sure to be a package for your favorite Linux flavor (RPM, Deb. Etc.) which you can download and install.

When I first came across SoX, it filled an urgent need I had at the time. I was running an English language teaching school and I created *.wav files to practice pronunciation with my students. For some reason my workstation would produce these files at a very low volume. I needed something that could very quickly turn up the volume of a sound file. That's when I learned my first SoX command:

sox file1.wav -v 5 file2.wav

This takes the original file and raises the volume by a SoX factor of 5. This doesn't mean 5 times as loud, but as the SoX man page points out, it gets linearly louder. At any rate, it was loud enough for me and I was delighted. This can also be done in reverse. If you have the need to lower the volume on some files, you can lower them by using negative numbers. Remember, the lower the number the softer it gets. For example:

sox file1.wav -v -0.5 file2.wav

will be louder than

sox file1.wav -v -0.1 file2.wav

If you want something to be really soft, try something like:

sox file1.wav -v -0.01 file2.wav

This comes in handy if you have ripped something and you consider it a little too loud for your tastes.