If the guy who sent it you cannot be bothered to tell you which format it is or at
the very least which extension it ought to have, then try .PCM. PCM is another 'WAV'
format (It means Pulse Code Modulation).

The RIFF header can mean a lot of things. you can embedd mp3 in a 'WAV' files using
the RIFF header to designate the type of audio.

Try opening the File Open dialog in one of the larger programs, like CoolEdit (now
Adobe Audition) and see if you can get file information about the marked file, that
is before attemping to load it.
Also try loading it as RAW, might give you an idea as to how many channels and
bitresolution you are dealing with, unless of course it is a compressed format, in
which case you cannot make a judgement this way.

-breiler


(M.Laymon) wrote:

I am trying to work with an audio file of a voice recording
someone sent me. The file has no extension.
I cannot play the file with either Musicmatch Jukebox or Windows Media Player.
The file will load into Jukebox, but no sound comes out when I press play.

I tried adding the extensions "mp3" and "wav" to see one of the audio
programs would recognize the file, but this did not work.
They still will not play the file.

I opened the file in a binary editor so I could look at the raw bytes.
The first few characters of the file are RIFF FA OL 0C WAVfmt,
where "FA" and "0C" are the hex representation of the bytes. The other
characters are printable ASCII characters. The string "WAVfmt" would
lead me to think the file was a WAVE file, but even if I add the ".wav"
extension, none of the audio programs can deal with the file.

Any suggestions on what kind of file it is and how to play it ? Thanks.