How to play non-PCM file or convert it to PCM on the fly ?

Question

The following code works with some wav files, but with others I get, \"InvalidOperationException was unhandled. Message=Sound API only supports playing PCM wave files.\"

Answer 1

So, do you want to PLAY the file or CONVERT it ? What is the primary goal ? Do you play it as a prove you can convert it, or do you convert it because you don't know how to play not-converted file ? http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#goal

Your question's title claims "convert" but the body claims "Play"

This answer is about playing files.

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You also may try to use FFDShow codecs directly without DirectX intermediate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libavcodec and http://libav.org/ and http://ffmpeg.org/ (they recently had a schism)

Googling for "FFDShow dotnet", "libav dotnet", "ffmpeg dotnet" shows a bunch of libraries to use it, such as

• https://github.com/ermau/libav.net
• Controlling ffdshow from .Net
• Solid FFmpeg wrapper for C#/.NET

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There is also BASS library. It is targeted as sound playback during gaming, so it probably has less range of formats and not much for re-coding. Still many music players are built on top of it. Some says it is the most simple API to use. So it worth considering. http://www.un4seen.com/

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http://MediaInfo.sf.net is a library (native win32/win64 DLL) allowing to check most multimedia formats content. I don't know if using tis C or C++ APis is easy from C# side.