hello, yes, peak/overview files and metadata is two different things. metadata should be stored in a open and extensible format such as XML. the problem with peak files is, different programmes rely on different resolution and representation. to give an example, in eisenkraut i use four peak files in four decimation scales ; only the highest resolution (1:256 (?)) is saved permanently, the others are created on the fly. since i want to support floating point files, i decided to store peak waveform in float32 format, which is rather big ; other sound editors will decide to not do this. also i store both peak and RMS information, others wish to store only peak, or peak and spectral focus or whatever. so unless two programmes are rather similiar, i wouldn't be too optimistic about using a uniform peak display. also i wouldn't deal with commercial software, honestly. if two software companies, say bias (for peak) and emagic/apple (for logic) are too dumb to agree on one format, i see no point why open source software should go and beg those companies to share their format. rather, if there are a few de facto standard open source softwares, it would make sense that they define a standard that they share. for eisenkraut i use normal AIFF files als overviews, i think that's pretty straight format, and since most programmes will store some form of PCM data, it shouldn't be too difficult to sync two -- if they work in a similar resolution and representation. there are some standards already, like SDIF for spectral information for example. best, -sciss- ____________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Never miss an Instant Message - Yahoo! Messenger for SMS http://au.mobile.yahoo.com/mweb/index.html