My server admin says that on a shared windows server, 'exec()' cannot be used. I would use the exec() function to run SoX CMD Commands. What is the alternative? Funny that they say SoX is installed, but how do I use that without exec()? What I want to implement is that when a user uploads a .mp3 file, it is converted to .wav on the server itself.
If you need CPU intensive stuff like audio re-encoding, I suggest you move off shared hosting, onto a VPS.