libsndfile/libsndfile

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1711 stars · 459 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

libsndfile is a C library for reading and writing files containing sampled audio data, such as WAV and AIFF, through a single standard API. It supports many formats including Ogg/Vorbis, FLAC, and MP3, with on-the-fly format conversion and cross-platform builds via Autotools or CMake.

Use cases

• read and write wav files in c
• convert audio file formats programmatically
• read flac files from a native application
• write aiff audio from my software
• decode ogg vorbis audio in a c program
• library for reading sampled audio data

When to choose

• you need a mature, widely portable C library for audio file I/O
• you must support many sound file formats through one API
• you need endian-safe reading of WAV and AIFF files

When to avoid

• you need real-time audio playback or recording rather than file I/O
• you want a high-level audio framework with effects and mixing
• your project cannot accept LGPL licensing

Facets

library · maturity stable

audio-processing file-system media developer-tools windows cross-platform cpp audio-i-o sound-file-formats wav aiff flac ogg-vorbis c-library audio linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="libsndfile/libsndfile")