.WAV File Format – Format codes

The first field of a WAV format chunk, wFormatTag, says how the samples are encoded. Microsoft kept the register: the codes are listed in its mmreg.h header and, as of 1998, in RFC 2361. They are the same in all four WAV formats. A code of 0xFFFE means the real format is the SubFormat GUID in an extensible format chunk, which for a classic format holds the same code again.

Every code is named in the explorer, with the same words as here. The last column says what the explorer does with the audio:

• Decoded – the waveform is shown and can be played.
• Specification, no decoder yet – a specification is published, but the explorer has no decoder for it yet.
• No public specification – no public description of the codec could be found, so the audio can only be shown as bytes.

A name without a vendor is one that the codec’s name alone makes plain. Where a code is a vendor’s name for a standard codec, the explorer decodes it as that standard.