At the time of a huge involvement in the development of linguistic resources, of their wide dissemination and re-usability, the problem of the standardisation of tools and data is especially relevant in the speech domain. The useability of speech databases and the portability of speech tools is very dependent upon the functionnalities provided or imposed by hardware and software manufacturers. Audio industry particularly (with the high sampling frequency used in DAT, CD) and computer manufacturers (with their devoted I/O boards or sound systems formats (WAV, AU, SND files...)) don't make things easier. Although some powerfull conversion tools do exist (as ``sox'' or ``sfconvert''), there is a general lack of reliable and easy-to-use conversion routines. A close relationship between industrials and public research organisations should take care of the bridges among their respective standards. If no agreement about a common standard can be aimed at, at least import and export drivers for conversion to the different formats must be handled.