WAV files from Bandcamp not playing in browser, or loading.

Hey,

I just downloaded a bunch of WAV files from bandcamp. I put them on my USB stick and went to load them on my Live, but they aren't loading, or playing from the browser either. The file names are kind of long, so I tried shortening one and re-loading, but didn't help.

They're all about 1min long - 44,100 - 24bit - all .wav extensions.

If I put it through Audacity and export as a WAV, of course the Live reads/loads it fine. I'd rather not do that for all of them, cos there's a lot. I know I'm probably gonna have to, but I thought it was worth asking in here before I go through all that. It's the first time I've downloaded anything from bandcamp so I thought maybe they use a weird format...

Crumb$ wrote:Hey,

I just downloaded a bunch of WAV files from bandcamp. I put them on my USB stick and went to load them on my Live, but they aren't loading, or playing from the browser either. The file names are kind of long, so I tried shortening one and re-loading, but didn't help.

They're all about 1min long - 44,100 - 24bit - all .wav extensions.

If I put it through Audacity and export as a WAV, of course the Live reads/loads it fine. I'd rather not do that for all of them, cos there's a lot. I know I'm probably gonna have to, but I thought it was worth asking in here before I go through all that. It's the first time I've downloaded anything from bandcamp so I thought maybe they use a weird format...

Try removing odd characters (# _ @ etc.) in the file names and try again.

83dude wrote:
Try removing odd characters (# _ @ etc.) in the file names and try again.

Yeah, tried that last night. The file name wasn't complicated to begin with, but I shortened it. No joy. If I put it through audacity, exporting as a WAV, same file name and it's fine.

Just tried plying them using the software on my Mac and it's still a fail. It's odd. Every other bit of software that I've got that plays audio will play these files...

Apparently band camp add something to the wav files, some software doesn't like it

https://forums.pioneerdj.com/hc/en-us/c ... ing-issue-

MPC-Tutor wrote:Apparently band camp add something to the wav files, some software doesn't like it

https://forums.pioneerdj.com/hc/en-us/c ... ing-issue-

And that is why I love this forum... Well spotted Tutor.

For anyone else who experiences this problem, the fourth reply down, from Cam Beattie, gives the following explanation;

"The problem is that the WAV files coming from Bandcamp are encoded with a extensible flag header in the file. Bandcamp don't make this known, nor do PioneerDJ mention anywhere that Extensible flags are not supported. I contacted PioneerDJ about it and they seem to have no intention of fixing it. The problem is worse if you have a library of music that is already with this extensible format. I have made a tool that retroactively checks and patches problematic wav files and removed the extensible format code in the header. Hope that helps"

He then posts a link to a Python tool that he's made. I'm not copying the link here out of respect to his property, but it's available there if you need it. I just tried it and it fixed my issue in seconds... You just point it at the folder and it scans through and removes the flag header. All files now playing in the MPC.

If you follow his link to GitHub, here is an extensive explanation of whats going on. The issue seems to affect standalone devices mostly.

it's 2024, this forum post from years ago that links to a forum thread from more years ago than that... is still relevant. I spent a long time trying to figure this out and finally nailed the search terms and found this thread.

I downloaded some bandcamp sample packs as wav, and some as m4a, and the wavs didn't work on my Live mkII, tried converting them to wav 16 bit, still didn't work. Converted the m4a (alac) to wav, those didn't work. Converting to aiff just solved my problem and now those sample packs are fully usable. Whoever figured this out originally, you da real MVP, forrreallllll

Yep after spending hours today dealing with my bandcamp collection, WAVPatcher fixed my whole collection in minutes. It's absurd that bandcamp does this. On top of that many of my albums had up to NINETY extra characters added per filename, so strange.

another alternative is to convert to aif, that's what I did and it worked great

sequethin wrote:another alternative is to convert to aif, that's what I did and it worked great

oh wait I'm replying to the same thread I just replied to the other day. lol wow I suck at forums

Crumb$ wrote:

MPC-Tutor wrote:Apparently band camp add something to the wav files, some software doesn't like it

https://forums.pioneerdj.com/hc/en-us/c ... ing-issue-

And that is why I love this forum... Well spotted Tutor.

For anyone else who experiences this problem, the fourth reply down, from Cam Beattie, gives the following explanation;

"The problem is that the WAV files coming from Bandcamp are encoded with a extensible flag header in the file. Bandcamp don't make this known, nor do PioneerDJ mention anywhere that Extensible flags are not supported. I contacted PioneerDJ about it and they seem to have no intention of fixing it. The problem is worse if you have a library of music that is already with this extensible format. I have made a tool that retroactively checks and patches problematic wav files and removed the extensible format code in the header. Hope that helps"

He then posts a link to a Python tool that he's made. I'm not copying the link here out of respect to his property, but it's available there if you need it. I just tried it and it fixed my issue in seconds... You just point it at the folder and it scans through and removes the flag header. All files now playing in the MPC.

If you follow his link to GitHub, here is an extensive explanation of whats going on. The issue seems to affect standalone devices mostly.

Yeah, the problem that they put wrong header into wav file. It should be 0x0001, WAVE_FORMAT_PCM.
To fix that, if you on mac or linux, just install ffmpeg and sox and process your files using next example:
sox original_file.wav -e signed-integer new_file.wav

I just discovered this because I was using sox (on windows) to combine audio samples. From what I can see in github, sox forces extensible if the bit depth is > 16 or the file has more than 2 channels.
https://github.com/chirlu/sox/blob/42b3 ... av.c#L1356

...now, I'm not sure if this is a bug, or a 'feature' from AKAI. My gut says bug.