So, I’ve started converting my CD collection to FLAC and, past the first rookie mistakes, the whole thing has been going rather smoothly.
I’ve noticed a very weird, occasional problem that I’m really at a loss to explain, though.
A few days ago, I converted a CD that contained 4 tracks. Since the last one was an alternate ending I was not particularly interested in, I decided for the first time to leave it out of the “convert” list. I always listen to a few random tracks when I’ve finished a particular CD but this time I decided to check all of them. The first two played normally but the last one wouldn’t open at all. More precisely, the Windows Media Player popped up but the track wouldn’t play. It didn’t display an error message, but nothing happened.
I thought I had messed up the conversion so I re-did it, all 4 tracks this time. By mistake, I sent the new FLAC files to another folder and all three of them played perfectly fine. When I realized that they were not at the right place, I moved them to the correct folder… and track 3 wouldn’t play anymore 
. I moved them back to the wrong folder, all of them played correctly. Back to the correct folder, track 3 didn’t work :mad:. I tried another player. Groove displayed an error message (something like “missing component 00041581”). However, VLC had absolutely no issue playing the track, even when it was in the problematic folder :dubious:.
By then, I thought that the issue was with folder itself, not the file. I created a new folder, didn’t give it a title, put the files in there and all three of them played correctly. I renamed that new folder using the title of the first one, track 3 wouldn’t play :smack:. So, I started experimenting with the title:
“Prokofiev” : fine
“Prokofiev - Symphony-Concerto” : no problem
“Prokofiev - Symphony-Concerto (Mork, Järvi)” : perfectly ok.
“Prokofiev - Symphony-Concerto (Mork, Järvi, Birmingham)” : track 3 doesn’t play !
Well, I had a solution, so I renamed the folder using a shorter title. I’ve checked it couple of times since then, and all the tracks played without a hitch. However, I have also found out that other tracks, in different folders were affected, too. Every time, neither WMP, nor Groove would open some of the tracks, while VLC had no issue at all. Every time, using a shorter title for the folder solved the problem, even when the offending one was the main folder and the tracks were buried in some subfolder.
So, I guess I have found the solution but I’m baffled both by the seemingly random nature of the problem (some tracks are affected, others not in the same folder) and by the weird solution. What does the length of the folder title (not the track title) have to do with WMP’s ability to play a FLAC file?