reading the values, i see mostly 0s but a few -1 and 1. using audacity to add more silence to the file, i do get a larger file ranging in size as one would expect with more samples. i think audacity is adding 0 level samples not using the "silent" chunk. i can send the wav file i am using if i know how to send it to you. if i edit the file in audacity using the draw function that allow you to edit each sample individually, i get pretty much random results instead of anything that makes sense. raising some 0 samples to something above the midline (0) i get a mix of negative values and pretty much all of them are distorted as if there is some offset in the bytes. the info dump shows numbers of bytes in samples and header, and total data that all add up correctly. thanks for any help.