[about sox]
using the "stat -v" effect only works when doing a conversion and needs
an output file, at least that's what i understood. writing a temporary file
just to find out the peak amplitude seems rather silly
if this is indeed necesary, you can always use /dev/null as the output file.
it still seems rather silly, but at least you won't need the disk-space for
the temporary file, and it will be faster too, writing to the sink instead
of to the harddisk.
maarten