It is really rather standard in computer music circles; we could call it
a well-established convention, to associate a particular extension with
a particular file format. There is a wide range of soundfile formats
"out there", many of which predate WAVE (.au, .snd, etc); to say
nothing of the gallimaufry of compressed formats. The huge list of
formats supported by libsndfile gives a pretty good idea. The plain WAVE
format is universally recognised as representing channels which
correspond either implicitly or explicitly to speaker feeds. That is not
true of the AMB format, so that in that technical sense giving an AMB
file the .wav extension misrepresents it.
There are examples out there of creative, strategic or proprietary
naming. For example, Apple's Logic Pro supplies a generous number of
reverb impulses in files with the extension SDIR (for use with the Sound
Designer convolution reverb). You will find they are in fact almost all
(I haven't examined them all) plain and playable AIFC files (mono or
stereo), albeit with some extra proprietary chunks. So people might well
be minded to change the names. But double-clicking on an SDIR file
launches the Impulse Response Utility, which is really quite handy!
Richard Dobson
On 02/10/2013 13:15, Sebastian Gabler wrote:
I am aware of these rather formal aspects. With the criteria of a
self-describing format fulfilled, it comes down to a naming convention.
Why that is part of a format specification is unclear to me.
Moreover it may cause what is actually a misconception according to the
below standing criteria that opening the container according to the .amb
extension is a requirement. It should be rather an option (to those who
would like to have a proprietary extension), and the requirement is to
handle the stream correctly within a file with a standard .wav extension.
Unless there are practical aspects, like the custom GUID would crash
most of the amb-agnostic players, which I doubt. Even then, the motive
should be given in the specification. Sheep should be called sheep. All
IMO.
Sebastian Gabler
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