There’s some WAV files extracted from an ISO that were encoded weird, so I wanted to convert all of them to a proper encoding that would be playable by my default Windows media player. At first when trying to open them with Audacity, I was told to get FFMPEG, so I did and it helped for some of the files, but a lot of them just wouldn’t open even with FFMPEG. Is there an explanation or fix for this?
Audacity 3.7.3 on Windows 11.
There are programs that will repair what they can in an audio file and ignore errors. FFMPEG is one of them (with the proper parameters), but it does not have a graphical interface like Windows, so if you are not comfortable doing batch processing you should avoid trying to use it.
I’m not sure if Handbrake has a mode to ignore errors. If it does, you could try using it (or some other program) to convert the audio to a different format and then import that audio file.
If you can’t play it, that’s a bad sign… 
Do you get an error message?
Do you know anything about the actual format? Technically, WAV is a “container” that can contain any format but compressed data is unusual.
Check the format with MediaInfoOnline.
If it’s PCM (like a normal WAV file) you can probably import it as raw data. For raw import, you’ll need to know (or guess) the sample rate, bit depth, and number of channels. MediaInfo should give you that if it has a valid WAV header.
A couple of things you might have to guess - You may have to try big-endian and little endian.
And you might have to try a different offset. The offset should be 44 bytes. That’s where the file header ends and the audio starts. There are 8-bits in a byte so if the bytes are “scrambled” and you get noise, you can try 45 for a 16-bit file or 45 & 46 for a 24-bit file.
Also for uncompressed audio you can check the file size if you know the details and playing time…
File size in KB = Playing time in seconds x Sample Rate in kHz x (Bit Depth/8) x Number of Channels.
For example, CD audio is 44.1kHz x 16 Bits/8 x 2 Channels = 176 kB per second. (or about 10MB per minute).
Whenever I open the files with the default Windows media player, it says “We can’t open [Filename]. It’s encoded in a format which isn’t supported.” I had to use VLC Media Player to play it. I uploaded one of the WAVs to MediaInfoOnline and below shows the info of the file.
I admit, I’m not super technical with stuff like this, so you may need to simplify what fixes I need to make to convert these WAV files into ones that are playable by most media players. 
If you can play it using VLC you can convert it using VLC. Google will help you figure it out.
MediaInfo says it’s only about 2.5 seconds and 4-bits (low quality). Is that you’re expecting? (I’m not familiar with the Voxware format.)
In VLC go to Media → Convert/Save → File → +Add to open the file. Then click Convert/Save at the bottom of that window and another window will open where you can choose the output-format and then click Start.
How about Audacity? Maybe FFmpeg didn’t get installed correctly?
Yes, these are from an ISO, as I said. They’re sound files from a game that someone ripped for me.
I never realized you could do that in VLC! That’s really good to know! However, when I tried it with one of the files, I was able to play it in the Windows media player, but it didn’t play the whole original clip. I double-checked in Audacity to see if that was just a player issue, but it’s not. Audacity doesn’t show the full clip either.
If you can play the sound in the game (or some other way), Audacity should be able to record it. Recording Desktop Audio
I already knew I could record with desktop audio. I just didn’t want to have to go through the trouble of trimming the audio. But I suppose I’ll have to just deal with that until there’s a quicker, more reliable solution.
