An example of reading headers and playing a simple wave file using the Windows Multimedia API. This is meant to illustrate how a simple wave file (PCM) player would work. It might fail on more complex files with metadata embedded into the data stream.

How to run

This is a console program that, when run with no arguments (or by double-clicking the exe), will ask you to choose a wave file to play, you can also specify a file path as the first argument. The second argument is the buffer size in samples which is also optional, the default value is 2048 samples. You can also try opening a file using the player from the explorer by right-clicking > Open With > Choose another app > More apps > Look for another app on this PC and then selecting the compiled exe.

Compiling

A precompiled version is available here, but you can also compile it yourself by using a C compiler like gcc. Make sure you are in the directory where you saved the source code and that the source code file is named main.c. Then execute:

gcc main.c -o main.exe -lwinmm -lcomdlg32

How it works

1. If there is no file path specified as a command line argument, it opens the file picker dialog.
2. Opens the chosen file in binary reader mode.
3. Reads the RIFF chunk specifying the format, which should be WAVE.
4. Since a wave file can have many types of chunks, which are not all implemented by this example player, it skips thouse and searches for the fmt chunk which specifies the audio data information (sample rate, number of channels, number of bits per sample...) required for proper playback.
5. Searches for the data chunk containing the actual audio samples.
6. Initializes the Windows Multimedia Wave Out API
7. Loads the first couple of samples into the buffer and cues it for playback.
8. Instantly loads the next buffer and cues it before the previous one is done playing to avoid pauses between two buffers.
9. Loads the upcoming buffers as the old ones are done playing, but always does that before the currently playing one is done to avoid pauses.
10. When there are no more bytes to read from the file, it means that there are no more samples to play and that the playback has reached its end, so resources can be released.

Great explanation of a wave file structure: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/courses/422-winter-2014/projects/WaveFormat/