The Csound Utilities are soundfile preprocessing programs that return information on a soundfile or create some analyzed version of it for use by certain Csound generators. Though different in goals, they share a common soundfile access mechanism and are describable as a set. In the first, the utility is invoked as part of the Csound executable, while in the second it is called as a standalone program. The second is smaller by about 200K, but the two forms are identical in function.
Filenames are of two kinds, source soundfiles and resultant analysis files.
Each has a hierarchical naming convention, influenced by the directory from which the Utility is invoked. Resultant analysis files are written into the current directory, or to the named directory if a path is included. Csound can read and write audio files in a variety of formats. Write formats are described by Csound command flags. On reading, the format is determined from the soundfile header, and the data automatically converted to floating-point during internal processing.