[Flac-dev] 96k/24-bit BWF encoding

[Justin Waddell]

Hi,

I am attempting to use flac to encode 96k/24-bit broadcast wav (BWF)
files. BWFs are wav files with some extra meta-data chunks, and is the
favoured archival format for many institutions around the world.

These files are encoded successfully by flac, however the resulting
flac file is not playable on all flac players - it plays successfully
in foobar2000 but is silent in winamp, and when using the illuminable
plugin for windows media player it informs me that a codec to play the
file could not be found. Other flac files play successfully in winamp
and windows media player.

The flac encoder does give a warning during the encoding process:

WARNING: legacy WAVE file has format type 1 but bits-per-sample=24

Looking at the specs for WAV files, it appears that for 24-bit files
should have their format code set to WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE, but these
files are still set to WAVE_FORMAT_PCM. Could this be the source of
the problem? If not, do you have any other ideas?

I can provide example files if wanted.

Thanks,

Justin