pcmdiff(1)

💖 pcmdiff — proof-of-concept raw PCM deltifier 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the hxtools corner of the manual pages, this one's pcmdiff(1) and she is niche but she ate 💅

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✨ SYNTAX ✨

pcmdiff file1 file2 >file3

that's it. that's the whole vibe. two files in, one file out, no cap 🫶

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so here's the tea, bestie 🍓 — pcmdiff computes the arithmetic difference between the raw PCM files file1 and file2, and then writes that difference to stdout. that's literally the whole job. she's a proof-of-concept, she's lowkey doing the most with the least, iconic behaviour honestly 👑

and why would you want that, you ask? because it lets you make the degradation that inherently comes with lossy audio formats actually audible 😭 like, you know how lossy codecs quietly eat bits and you're like "is anything even happening??" — yeah, this is how you hear exactly what got munched. main character energy for audio nerds, fr fr ✨

ngl the difference output is not a normal listenable song, it's the delta, so brace yourself for some weird little sounds 🙈

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🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

the classic lossy-degradation-exposing ritual, step by step:

oggenc -q0 -o test.ogg test.wav;
oggdec -o test2.wav test.ogg;
pcmdiff test.wav test2.wav >delta.wav;

so you encode test.wav into test.ogg with oggenc -q0 -o test.ogg test.wav 👑, decode it right back with oggdec -o test2.wav test.ogg 🦋, and then let pcmdiff test.wav test2.wav >delta.wav show you exactly what the codec did to your baby 💀✨

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• hxtools(7) — the whole hxtools fam, go say hi 💜

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hxtools · 2008-11-11 — yeah she's been serving since 2008 and she's still cute, periodt 💅✨ bye bestie, go diff some PCM 🌈