Hi, As I've gone through my most challanging mastering project, I've developed more questions than answers. There's been reference, on this list, to documentation that explains file formats-- I don't recall the document title or where to find it. Ultimately, I need a resouce that explains things like; the number of available samples for the different bit depths (16bit range from -ABC to +XYZ, 24bit...), DC offset is, peak amplitude is, RMS is, etc. I need to know if samples are syncronous with decibel level, is maximum samples equal to 0db? In the following sndfile-info report, what are Length and Block Align? Version : libsndfile-1.0.6 ======================================== File : guajira-jam.wav Length : 30396228 RIFF : 30396220 WAVE fmt : 16 Format : 0x1 => WAVE_FORMAT_PCM Channels : 2 Sample Rate : 44100 Block Align : 4 Bit Width : 16 Bytes/sec : 176400 data : 30396184 End ---------------------------------------- Sample Rate : 44100 Frames : 7599046 Channels : 2 Format : 0x00010002 Sections : 1 Seekable : TRUE Duration : 00:02:52.313 Signal Max : 25922 Is Signal Max a measurement of used samples? One of the problems I've confronted during mastering is JAMin, Ardour and hardware meters tell me that a track is peaking around -0.5db but the hardware mixer indicates overload. Of course metering balistics being what they are this is understandable. The mixer documentation doesn't tell me at what level the overloads are set to go off at and I haven't found a configuration interface. With this metering and overload discrepancy I'd like to read a sndfile-info report that tells me; of the available samples, this file uses a minimum of X and maximum of X. I wonder if some of qualities any of us should know about our mastered files includes: Min Sample Value Max Sample Value Peak Amplitude Possibly Clipped DC Offset Minimum RMS Power Maximum RMS Power Average RMS Power Total RMS Power Of course another challange is tools like sndfile-info assume that a file exists. This is not always the case and in my situation it's almost never true. I return JAMin output to an Ardour return bus and don't produce a file until the return bus is exported. Printing a track to the file system and then analyzing it is no way to save time. Anyway, I appreciate all the responses to my past questions and am hopeful that someone can look at the current mumbo jumbo and prescribe some effective medications; coffee, sleep, black bear gallbladders, urls to useful documents, etc. ron __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html