Recursive WAV Opener — User Guide

A utility script to recursively search and load all .wav files from a selected folder and all its subdirectories into the Praat Objects window.

Author: Shai Cohen Affiliation: Department of Music, Bar-Ilan University, Israel Version: 0.1 (2025) License: MIT License Repo: https://github.com/ShaiCohen-ops/Praat-plugin_AudioTools

Contents:

What this does Quick start Implementation Details

What this does

This script is a powerful utility for batch-loading audio files into Praat. Unlike Praat's native "Read from file" command, this script uses a recursive search function to find and load every single .wav file (case-insensitive) contained within a specified root directory and any number of its subfolders. This is particularly useful when dealing with large, multi-level datasets.

Efficiency Note: By automating the search through nested directories, this script saves substantial time and effort when preparing large corpora for analysis or processing in Praat.

The script only loads files and outputs a log of its progress to the Praat Info window; it does not perform any analysis.

Quick start

Run the script: Praat → Run script… → Recursive WAV opener.praat.
A dialog box will appear prompting you to Select folder containing .wav files. Navigate to and select your desired root folder (the folder that contains all the WAV files, possibly in subfolders).
Click OK. The script will immediately begin searching and loading files.
All discovered .wav files will appear as Sound objects in the Praat Objects window.

Output: The script prints a log of every file it successfully opens to the Info window, along with the starting directory.

Important: This script can load hundreds or thousands of files. If you select a very large directory, Praat's performance may slow down due to the number of objects loaded into memory.

Implementation Details

Analysis Steps

The script's core function is handled by a recursive procedure:

Folder Selection: The script uses the Praat command chooseDirectory$ to get the root path from the user.
Path Sanitization: It ensures the selected directory path ends with a forward slash (/) for reliable cross-platform compatibility.
The Recursive Procedure: A procedure named openWavFiles is defined to:
- Find all .wav files (case-insensitive using fileNames_caseInsensitive$#) in the current directory.
- Load each found file using Read from file:.
- Find all subfolders (using folderNames$#).
- Call itself (recurse) for each subfolder found, appending the subfolder name to the path.

Fixed Analysis Parameters

The functionality relies on the following fixed parameters/behavior:

Parameter	Value	Description
File Type	*.wav	Only files with the .wav extension are loaded.
Case Sensitivity	No	The search for .wav files is case-insensitive.
Loading Mechanism	Read from file	All loaded files become individual Sound objects in the Praat Objects window.
Search Depth	Unlimited	The script recurses into all subfolders, regardless of depth.