libsndfile is a widely used[2][3] C library written by Erik de Castro Lopo for reading and writing audio files.

[4] It supports a wide variety of audio file formats and will convert automatically from one to another.

In addition to the library itself, the package provides command-line programs for converting one format to another (sndfile-convert), for playing audio files (sndfile-play), and for obtaining information about the contents of an audio file (sndfile-info).

libsndfile is available for Unix-like systems, including Linux and Mac OS X, and for Microsoft Windows.

[4] libsndfile is used, for example, by audio-editing software such as Audacity and Adobe Audition[3] and the MP3 encoder LAME.