Media 9 Voice encoded files crashes WM2003 Windows Media Player

[murdockr]

I have encoded several audio files using Microsoft Media Encoder 9 using the Windows Media Audo 9 Voice codec with formats from 4 kbps, 8 kHz, mono to 20 kbps, 22 kHz, mono.

I can play them fine on the desktop with WMP 9.

I have tried to play them on a Toshiba, iPAQ 5555, and Dell Axim all running Windows Mobile 2003.

In every case WMP will recognize the files and will display the
properties.

But when I try to actually play the files, WMP crashes...just
vanishes. No error message, the application just aborts.

Has anyone had any success playing these type of files?

[Mark Ramberg]

This is a known issue with the WMA9 voice codec on certain steppings of the XScale PXA250 processor. Until an updated version of the codec is released to OEMs to include in their device's ROM, there is a registry work-around that you can do to keep it from crashing. The tradeoff, however, is that setting this registry key turns off adaptive post filtering in the codec, which may slightly degrade the quality.

OEMs were given the following information so that they could set this registry setting as a default in their ROM prior to shipping, but it sounds like that may not have happened on some devices:

Codecs and C Steppings of PXA250

Until further notice, Microsoft strongly recommends disabling APF on all devices using C steppings of PXA250. Since disabling APF degrades quality, it should be understood that this should be performed only on devices containing the C stepping PXA250 component.

The registry key to set is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Media Player\Codecs\WMAVoice

“CPUPerformance”=DWORD:0x00000001

Thanks,
Mark