Bash one-liner using sox to batch convert the sampling frequency of audio files

A bash one-liner to batch convert the sampling rate of WAV files using the SoX tool.  The example will resample *.wav files in the current directory to 8000Hz and place the output in an existing subdirectory called 8000Hz.

The one-liner below is overkill for this task, but the extra arguments provide a starting point for modification for related tasks.  The use of find/xargs should help the one-liner deal with very large numbers of audio files and filenames that contain whitespace.

Code

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find . -maxdepth 1 -name '*.wav' -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -t -r -I {} sox {} -r 8000 8000Hz/{}

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Explanation

An explanation of commands and flags from left-to-right:

find .

searches the current directory subtree

-maxdepth 1

excludes subdirectories

-name '*.wav' -type f

outputs files that match the glob *.wav

-print0

first step in handling filenames with spaces

xargs

executes a command given the output of find

-0

second step in handling filenames with spaces

-t

prints on stdout the command that is to be executed

-r

runs SoX command iff find output is generated

-I {}

specifies the pattern “{}” is replaced by the output of find


sox {} -r 8000 8000Hz/{}

is the resampling command

Tags: audio, linux