Exported wav file won't play in Windows Media Player

[rackwe]

I have exported a selection in both wav and mp3. The files will not play in Windows Media Player. They WILL play in Quicktime, ITunes, VLC Media Player and Real player, but when I open them in Windows Media Player 11, they show up and the play button changes to the pause icon, but they never start playing.
Other wav files and mp3 files will play in WMP 11 though. I thought maybe I had a glich, so I downloaded and reinstalled WMP 11. I got the same results. Has anyone experienced this and if so, how can it be fixed?

[steve]

Set the Project sample rate to 44100 Hz, and export WAVs as 16 bit - they should play in anything then.

[rackwe]

Thanks for the reply. I had the Project Rate set at 44100, but I was using 32-bit float. I changed it to 16 bit and get the same results. Maybe someone else has had this situation.

[steve]

It sounds like a problem with WMP. Maybe it's looking for a DRM license or something stupid like that.
Is there any particular reason why you want to use WMP? I can think of lots of reasons not to.

[rackwe]

No particular reason. As I said, the files play in Quicktime, ITunes, VLC Media Player and Real player. It's just that I find this a puzzle and I wanted to find the answer. I agree, it's probably a WMP problem, and I find it very curious that WMP will play other wav and mp3 files, but not the ones coming from Audacity. I won't lose any sleep over this, I just wondered if anyone else had experienced this and solved it.

[steve]

I've heard of other people having this problem, but not with WAV files at 44.1 / 16
WMP will not always play 32 bit wav files, or 48 kHz WAV files, but I've not heard of it failing with 16 bit 44.1 kHz.

Could you post a short sample WAV file on the internet somewhere and post a link so that we can look at it. (unfortunately you can not post audio files directly onto the forum).

[rackwe]

There are a couple selections at this address.

http://www.freewebs.com/rackwe/sound.html

[steve]

There's nothing wrong with those files (great tune too)

Clean up some of the junk files on your computer by uninstalling WMP.
BTW, the mp3 file is 16 bit, not 32 bit - it may have been made from a 32 bit file, but when converted to mp3 it is changed to 16 bit.

[rackwe]

Thanks for looking at them stevethefiddle.

[menrosen]

I have just run into the same problem, after installing Audacity 1.3.5 (Beta). I was previously using version 1.3.3 without any problems. I did not uninstall this version before installing 1.3.5. Could that be a cause of problems?
As reported by rackwe, I can play the file in other MP3 players. But in WMP (version 10), I get a message that there might be a problem with the codec used to compress the file.
Since I still have Audacity 1.2.6 installed, I used it to open the MP3 file and re-exported it. This time, the file opened without a hitch in WMP. (BTW, same preferences used, same resulting file size.)

WMP is often ridiculed, but I find it convenient for simply listening to recorded MP3 files. I rarely try to do anything else with it. What are the "lots of reasons not to" use WMP?