README.md

The SoX_ng project imports, compares and refines bug fixes and new work from the 50-odd software distributions that package SoX and from the plethora of forks on github and elsewhere and makes regular releases with a six-monthly cadence for each of the micro (bug fixes) and minor (new features) releases. A major release (non-backwards-compatible changes) is being considered.

The next micro release is scheduled for the 18th February 2026.
The next minor release is scheduled for the 18th November 2025.

Terminology

sox means sox.sf.net
SoX means the Swiss Army Knife of command-line audio processing in any of its incarnations
sox_ng means the hard fork of sox-14.4.2 aiming to sanitize SoX
SoX_ng means the project to maintain sox_ng

How to get it

sox_ng lives at codeberg.org/sox_ng/sox_ng and is composed of a SoX code base, a wiki and an issue tracker.

Releases

Download one of the release tarballs.

Extract it:

tar xzf sox_ng-*.tar.gz

Build it:

./configure
make

Install it:

make install

It installs as sox_ng so that sox and sox_ng can coexist on the same system. For it to work the same as the original sox, use ./configure --enable-replace instead.

Development branches

main

To fetch the latest version:

git clone https://codeberg.org/sox_ng/sox_ng
cd sox_ng
autoreconf -i

and to make local copies of the wiki and the issues:

git clone https://codeberg.org/sox_ng/sox_ng.wiki wiki
issues/getissues.sh

To compile it:

./configure
make

and to install it:

sudo make install

This installs it as sox_ng, sox_ng.h, libsox_ng and so on, so as not to conflict with traditional sox. If you want it to work the same as the original sox, use ./configure --enable-replace

Build dependencies

To compile a release tarball you will need make, libtool and gcc or clang (./configure CC=clang)

To build the git repository you will also need autoconf and automake.

To enable all of SoX's optional modules you can install ladspa-sdk lame, libao, libflac, libid3tag, libmad, libogg, libopusfile, libpng, libsndfile, libvorbis, opencore-amr, twolame, wavpack.

Debian, Ubuntu etc.

apt-get install gcc make libtool ladspa-sdk libao-dev libasound2-dev libgsm1-dev libid3tag0-dev libltdl-dev libmad0-dev libmagic-dev libmp3lame-dev libopencore-amrnb-dev libopencore-amrwb-dev libopusfile-dev libpng-dev libpulse-dev libsamplerate0-dev libsndfile1-dev libtwolame-dev libvorbis-dev libwavpack-dev

and to run issues/getissues.sh and makehtml.sh

apt-get install jq libtext-multimarkdown-perl

Fedora, Red Hat, CentOS etc.

yum install gcc make libtool libvorbis-devel alsa-lib-devel libtool-ltdl-devel libsamplerate-devel gsm-devel wavpack-devel ladspa-devel libpng-devel flac-devel libao-devel libsndfile-devel libid3tag-devel pulseaudio-libs-devel opusfile-devel libtool libmad-devel lame-devel twolame-devel opencore-amr-devel file-devel libcaca-devel

and to run issues/getissues.sh and makehtml.sh

yum install jq multimarkdown

Accessibility

You can edit and commit to the code and the wiki using Codeberg's web interface or from the command-line. The command-line is the only way to add images and attachments to the wiki.

The issues are currently read-only to the command line and editable only on the Codeberg web site. This will change.

Community

Mailing list

• sox-ng@groups.io
  To subscribe, go there or send an email to sox-ng+subscribe@groups.io

Private email

• sox_ng@fastmail.com

Finances

• SoX_ng's financial accounts are public and
• Bounties can be offered for specific issues to be resolved

README

To generate SoX's original README, run ./README.sh