title: reading a WAV file from TIMIT database in python
body: <p>I'm trying to read a wav file from the TIMIT database in python but I get an error:</p>
  
  <p>When I'm using wave:</p>
  
  <pre><code>wave.Error: file does not start with RIFF id
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I'm using scipy:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ValueError: File format b'NIST'... not understood.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and when I'm using librosa, the program got stuck.
  I tried to convert it to wav using sox:</p>
  
  <pre><code>cmd = "sox " + wav_file + " -t wav " + new_wav
  subprocess.call(cmd, shell=True)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and it didn't help. I saw an old answer referencing to the package scikits.audiolab but it looks like it is no longer supported.</p>
  
  <p>How can I read these file to get a ndarray of the data?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>