While trying to write a program to produce WAV files, we discovered the following anomaly.
A 16 Bit PCM File with exactly 22250 samples will cause a lot of troubles for many media players:
- The XP media player will display "Windows Media Player encountered an unknown error."
The sound recorder however can play it
Extremely strange: When played directly from this website, it works ! - The Vista media player will crash with the following message:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: wmplayer.exe
Application Version: 11.0.6001.7007
Application Timestamp: 4a5c650c
Fault Module Name: StackHash_ab52
Fault Module Version: 6.0.6001.18000
Fault Module Timestamp: 4791a7a6
Exception Code: c0000374
Exception Offset: 000b015d
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 2055
Extremely strange: When played directly from this website, it works !
When stored in a local file, the player crashes... - The HP MediaSmart Musik 4.1.1.4215 on Windows 7 will also crash
- The media player of Windows 7 can play it
- The problem seems to be windows specific, Audacity under Linux had no problem
Adding or removing just a single sample fixed the problem.
This is our first attempt to write a WAV file, so the header might be wrong, but we strongly believe the media players should not crash when asked to play an invalid file ...
If you find an error in the file, we would like to hear from you.
Yes, we tried to get the attention of microsoft, by mailing to "secure" and by posting to "microsoft answers", but got no useful reaction. Therefore we decided to post it to the internet.