WTF is in a WAV File?
On a walk recently, I started wondering: What’s actually in a sound file? Not like “oh, it’s music”.. but what are the actual bytes doing? How does a .wav file stored on a computer capture something as rich and human as a voice? So I started poking at it. Here’s what I learned. First principles guesswork While walking, I jotted some thoughts in my Notes app. These weren’t facts, just things I assumed to be true (memory from a physics degree long past): ...