Problem with WAV codec

I have a home 4-track digital recorder that records files in a proprietary format on a SmartMedia card. It comes with a utility to manage the files, and convert them to WAV. It worked fine on my Windows 98 machine (that was a while back). Now I am using on my Vista machine and Windows Media Player is telling me it can’t play the format, probably because of an unrecognized codec used to compress the file. However, it can play WAV files that I created with the same software on my old machine.

The device is not very well supported and may not be available anymore. Any suggestions as to what I can do with a WAV file that can’t be played?

It also converts to AIF, which is playable, so I have a workaround. But still…

It’s possible that an audio editor could convert the files to a playable format. Audacity might work, and it’s free.

Find out what codec you need and install it?

WAV (like TIFF) is just an “envelope” and the “real” format is in the codec used so you need top have a decoder installed which can decode that format.

What is the name of the device that made the files?

As sailor wrote, WAV isn’t a codec, it’s a specification for how the file is structured. In theory, it supports several different encoding schemes. In practice, however, WAV files are almost always uncompressed PCM data.

If you’re not afraid of the command line, there’s a nifty sound file conversion utility called SoX:
http://sox.sourceforge.net/

WAV’s come in many, what I call flavours.

When I’ve made vinyl rips the wavs come out huge 96khz. Of course CDs only 44.1khz.

You may want to try the free program audacity. What I do is load the file. Once you load the file with the .wav extension Audacity will tell you on the left, what size the WAV is and what the hz is.

Then go to the lower left corner it’ll say “project rate.” Click on this, (it may not look like you can click on the rate but you can." Then choose 44.1khz then resave the wav.

If you think it may be a codec issue, go to Snapfiles and downlonad K-Lite Codec Pack

WAVs can be and often are compressed and the OP is a clear example of this. I have hundreds of compressed WAVs.

I know very well that the WAV format allows compression; I have once coded a WAV file parser. Nevertheless, especially nowadays, a great number of audio programs save only PCM data in WAV files. Obviously, people who use software or hardware that generates compressed WAVs are familiar with them. However, I would be very surprised if the number of compressed WAVs out there isn’t a tiny fraction of the uncompressed ones.

(For what it’s worth, the OP’s data may, in fact, be PCM. If it’s a four-channel PCM file, it’s not impossible that this could cause Media Player some problems. Although to be fair, I’ve never used it…)

I probably should have made clear that this is almost a direct quote from the error message, and not my diagnosis. The exact message is, “The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file.”

Well, you’re probably right, but that’s a bit like saying to someone who’s never driven a car that all they need to do is turn the key and drive.

The proprietary files are from the Zoom MRS-4. It has a conversion utilityto convert to WAV or AIFF.

I already had Audacity and it seems to do the trick! But it is still of interest to understand what’s causing the problem and whether I can teach WMP to handle it.

From what I can gather from Zoom’s site, the WAV files are 16-bit 32kHz PCM data. 32kHz is a rather unusual sampling rate and I’m almost certain that this is what is tripping Media Player. However, I don’t have a Vista machine on hand to test things out. If that is the problem, however, the easiest solution is to convert to a sampling rate WMP supports like 44.1kHz, which will make your files much more portable anyway (if a little bigger.) You can do this with Audacity, or SoX, which has the advantage of batch processing, so you can convert all your files at once.

No, not at all. It is the standard rate chosen for consumer applications so that pro stuff (copyrighted, 44.1 Khz) could be differentiated and DRM more easily applied. As far as I know all home video cams record at 32 KHz.

I am almost certain that is not the problem and the problem is with the codec.

I’d like a cite about DRM being the reason for 32 kHz, as opposed to smaller file sizes.

Consumer voice recorders often produce 32 kHz PCM WAV files, but these are nevertheless relatively uncommon. Google returns about 1000 hits for “32 khz wav,” 17,000 for “44.1 khz wav,” 2,100 for “48 khz wav” and about 2,500 for “96 khz wav.” It doesn’t show actual usage, but it’s a measure of how often people talk about these formats and I expect some correlation. As for camcorders, consumer HD formats store audio in compressed form. In the DV format, audio can be stored as either 32 kHz or 48 kHz PCM, but even clearly consumer-oriented models offered the choice to record at 48 kHz.

I don’t see any indication that Card Manager saves in any other format than PCM. It would be very surprising if it did without any mention – the compression formats officially supported are very limited; it’s possible to specify other, proprietary formats, but that defeats the purpose of exporting to WAV for portability.

I downloaded Card Manager and ran it on my XP machine but it doesn’t work without an actual card, so I can’t confirm the precise formatting it uses. CookingWithGas, if you have a short WAV file that won’t play in WMP and you don’t mind sharing, I can try to do some forensic analysis on its header. PM me if you’re interested.

48 and 32 Khz were chosen to not be compatible with 44.1 and 22 Khz. But that is irrelevant here. So I won’t get into it.

I’d like to see a cite that

Because I have never had any problems with any programs playing any bitrate unless there was a codec problem. In fact, I just now recorded a clip in 32 Khz and played it back with no problem.