Creative Voice ,

filename extension A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically ...

.voc, is an audio format for digital audio data developed in the 1990s

Sound Blaster Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards designed by Singaporean technology company Creative Technology (known in the US as Creative Labs). Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system pl ...

sound cards from

Creative Technology Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singaporean multinational technology company headquartered with overseas offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, Dublin, and Silicon Valley (where in the US it is known as Creative Labs). The principal activities of the compa ...

Construction

Original 8-bit format

The file format consists of a 26-byte header and a series of subsequent data blocks containing the audio information. The byte order is

little-endian In computing, endianness, also known as byte sex, is the order or sequence of bytes of a word of digital data in computer memory. Endianness is primarily expressed as big-endian (BE) or little-endian (LE). A big-endian system stores the most si ...

. The header is followed by data blocks. Each data block begins with a type byte describing the contents of the data, followed by 3 bytes for the size of the data. For two of the 9 defined types, the subsequent size of the data is missing, so the block ultimately consists of only a single byte – these are 0x00 terminator, and 0x07 repeat end. If a size is specified, the first 4 bytes will be followed by a block of the content resulting from the specified type with the specified size. The file optionally ends with the terminator block (data block of type 0x00).

Use

Creative Voice files were used in various DOS games when they could use sound blaster cards for audio output, such as '' Eye of the Beholder''.movAX13h
"Dr. Riptide Dissected"
(README file). GitHub. The spread of the file format disappeared noticeably with the advent of RIFF WAVE, which was already supported in

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

. However, the Creative Voice file format required the installation of additional player programs included with the

Card drivers. With the advent of AC'97, WAVE, file extension .WAV, finally prevailed.

References

{{Reflist Audio file formats