[Openal] Is it possible? Load a WAV file without a sound card

[Jevon Kendon]

Hi,

I would like to know if it's possible to load a WAV file on a machine
that does not have a sound card.

This seems silly, I know, but the reason is specific to the application
at my work place. This application requires that all offline data be
integrity checked before it's used online (real-time, mission critical
system). Someone thought that checking the characteristics of the WAV files
used would be a good idea. Anyway, this checking is done by a different
application.

My suggestion was to just load and unload the WAV file, using the same
OpenAL interface as used by the online application, and if that was 
successful
the WAV file would be considered OK.

I'm trying the deprecated interface as what works online:

  alutLoadWAVFile((ALbyte*)filename, &format, &data, &size, &freq, &loop);
  if (alGetError() != AL_NO_ERROR)
  {
    there was a problem.
  }

  alutUnloadWAV(format, data, size, freq);

Question is: Will these calls work if I don't initialize the device or
the context? i.e. use a machine that doesn't have a sound card?

The call to alutLoadWAVFile fails. There is no error, but data is NULL.
Digging a bit deeper, the internal error is AL_ERROR_IO_ERROR, but errno
is 0. The only difference I can think of is that I have not initialized
the sound environment, but I can't do that as this checker application
runs on a machine without a sound card.

After that, my next idea is to use some other tool to satisfy that some
integrity checking has been done (even if it's ">file test.wav" on Linux)

Any ideas appreciated,

Thanks,
Jevon

-- 
J

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