an audio format that supports indexing clips?

[Gildor Oronar]

Dear all!

I've been looking for a way to stuff my 1000 short audio clips into one
big audio file, while retain the possibility to play only a single clip
in it. I need this to avoid shipping a software package with 1000 tiny
files, especially they might be deployed to in-efficient file systems
like FAT.

The first thing come to my mind is to use a concatenate-able audio
format, like the old '.au' format, and create a index file to go with
it, which is pretty much like the output of strfile(1). Each entry in
the index file is the start and end pointer of a clip.

But, if there exist an audio format that can contain multiple clips, not
unlike TIFF image format which can contain multiple images in a file,
then I should prefer that, giving user the capacity to further
manipulate the audio file in a standard way. I want, e.g. let user able
to play a clip within without developing their own tool or comprehend
the index file structure I designed.

I looked up wikipedia. It says

"8SVX audio format supports features such as attack, release and section
repeat, which are useful for storage of musical instrument samples."

That suggests 8SVX format have a way to define a sub-clip within a big
audio file. I am sure this feature is not unique to the age-old 8SVX
format. It is only mentioned on 8SVX format page because by that early
days this is a feature worth mentioning. So my question is: what other
modern audio container formats allows me to define a clip, index it, or
even better, name each clip?

Thanks all in advance!
Best...


P. S. I did my homework to check what others would do in this case, as
it is a common need in computer games. It turns out, most computer games
ship with audio file packaged into a single big file, the format of
which is usually re-invented by game vendor themselves. This seems to me
is a very close-minded approach. Bethesda for example, ship .bsa files,
a packaging format that needs special tools.