My .wav codec is missing?

A few months earlier I installed a codec pack but I had some issues with it so there was a bit uninstalling and installing with codec packs all the time.

Now all my video's etc work fine, that isn't the issue now, but I cannot seem to open .wav files anymore. No matter what software I use. Only the audio editing tool Audacity can open it (But that is probably because I think it converts the audio before opening it)

I know there are different codec's for wave files, so I don't know if they're all broken or something, but I did check a certain file that didn't work which had ID #1. (Not sure if it's necessary to post that but it might be important for some?)

Anyways, can I download the codec from somewhere or is there a workaround to get the .wav files to work again?

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Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames

Quick Lesson:

Media files on a computer operate under the relationship between CODECS and CONTAINERS.

Codecs are the actual techniques in which something is encoded and then decoded (playback). So, h.264, DTS, MPEG Layer 3, MPEG 2, etc are all CODECS.

A Container, on the other hand, is the actual file you interact with. So, MP4, MP3, WAV, MKV, AVI, etc These have nearly NO baring on what kind of information is stored inside. A container is exactly what it sounds like: it's a file that contains data from codec encoding and some header data describing them. There are some restrictions in the container standards and definitions that say this or that codec cannot be used, or these settings can't be used, it's up to the container.

So, just because you have a MP4 container ... doesn't mean it's video is h.264.

With that being said, WAV is a very basic container, it usually holds RAW or MPEG 1 audio.

What you need to do is figure out what's inside the WAV container. You can use something like GSpot (very iffy, it barely works for me) or FFMPEG (command line, sorry, but it's the best tool out there) Which can not only tell you what's in it, but the properties of it and even allow you to manipulate it (like pull it out of the container, convert it, etc)

You can also just play the file, even though it's not playing, depending on the player, you may still be able to look at the header information. If you use something like Media Player Classic (NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER) you can go to properties and get this information (Very useful)

I'll leave the searching up to you to find these things, as they're very popular. There's a lot of information out there on using FFMPEG command line depending on what you want.

Just try to see if the codecs being used on the data in the container ... exist on your computer. If they don't ... hop on over to Free-codec.com and get the specific codec you need ... not some massive collection pack (though you should leave the other codecs you have alone).

I wish I could remember this one tool for Windows ... it listed all codecs installed all sorts of stuff, was very useful ... but I can't remember it's name.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I haven't messed with anything in so long that I am unsure if I should even reply since my post might lead you astray but, when I was messing with movies and MP3 stuff I always started HERE.

It helped me resolve so many issues that I lost track. They may not help you but they could lead you to some place that might.

Good luck.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Hey Crono, FFMpeg seems to be a nice tool. It took me a while to find out how it works, but I was thinking too complicated.

It told me the codec that is not functioning is called

"pcm_s16le"

So I am going to try to find that codec right now. I'll edit this post with status updates lolz

Edit: Hmm I can't find it. Am I looking for a .dll? And where should I put it? C:/windows/system32? Is it possible to lend someone else's?

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Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames

PCM is 'raw' audio (pulse control modification) it's something that any audio processing unit can understand.

The S16LE means signed 16-bit Little Endian, which is about how the CPU uses memory. (Don't worry about it)

So ... unless the file is corrupted, this should play. Something you can do is use ffmpeg to convert an mp3 or some such audio file into pcm_s16le and see if it plays, if it does, then the file you can't play is busted, if it doesn't, there's a problem somewhere else.

ffmpeg -i infile.mp3 -acodec pcm_s16le -ab 1536 -ar 48000 -ac 2 -f outfile.wav

Also, you can use VLC to check stuff if you want too, it has a local set of codecs independent of the ones installed on your computer and it gives detailed information. Some profiles for some codecs simply don't work in some players. (AAC SBR, for example)

There could also be something wrong with the container ... if you wanna check that out you can just do something like this:

ffmpeg -i infile.wav -acodec copy -f outfile.wav

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.