4Taken from the ecasound (1) manpage:

To select and use only a specific segment of an audio object, the -i:select, start- time, duration, file.ext, params can be used. This will play "duration" of "file.ext", starting at "start-time". The time values should be given as seconds (e.g. "2.25", or as samples (e.g. "25000sa"). Parameters 4...N are passed as is to the child object.