The format category of a WAVE file is specified by the value of the usFormatTag field of the 'fmt' chunk. The representation of data in <wave-data>, and the content of the <format-specific-fields> of the 'fmt' chunk, depend on the format category.
The currently defined open non-proprietary WAVE format categories are as follows:
usFormatTag Value
The following are the registered proprietary WAVE format categories:
usFormatTag Value
The following sections describe the Microsoft WAVE_FORMAT_PCM format.