Some sounds have 0 duration, 0 channels, 0bps, no playhead but playback ok (can't navigate)

[qubodup]

This is at least the 3rd time that I spot this. Some sounds have 0 duration, 0 channels, 0bps but play back ok, except there is no playhead and skipping doesn't work.

https://freesound.org/people/BalikBayan.Productions/sounds/833842/
https://freesound.org/tickets/582bdee4427a40f2bf488b96df97c13c/

EDIT 2025-12-02, another example:
https://freesound.org/tickets/bcb8b914bfaa43ab8143d637c501fd75/

EDIT 2025-12-05, more examples, adding screenshots for illustration:
https://freesound.org/people/JamesNorrington/sounds/836028/
https://freesound.org/tickets/c3df55802c0d47dcaa8130b09c87127d/ (I'm approving it now to investigate the source file since there is no other way - #2009 )

EDIT 2025-12-21 one more:
https://freesound.org/tickets/24dff945beba48f1a7086e63b1f726f5/

[qubodup]

Taking https://freesound.org/people/Sound-Art-UK/sounds/836004/ as an example.

Testing using soxi, file and ffprobe shows nothing strange (See the output at the bottom of this message). When comparing to https://freesound.org/people/Sound-Art-UK/sounds/836001/ the encoding info is identical (except when related to length/filesize).

This is possibly a freesound issue. Possibly Freesound loses length/size/channel information if it crashes while processing.

A solution might be to re-start the process if at the end, if file size, length and channels are 0.

Or to ensure that this information is not lost in a crash by storing it in a way that allows recovery in a crash.

Or in the case of race conditions, delay processing/publishing until these values are not 0.

FYI: When uploading file with size 0 (touch test.wav), Freesound upload rejects it with the message "The submitted file is empty."

There appear to be 47 sounds affected, some as old as 2022: https://freesound.org/search/?f=channels%3A0 .

$ soxi TEST.wav
Input File     : 'TEST.wav'
Channels       : 2
Sample Rate    : 44100
Precision      : 16-bit
Duration       : 00:01:31.82 = 4049375 samples = 6886.69 CDDA sectors
File Size      : 16.2M
Bit Rate       : 1.41M
Sample Encoding: 16-bit Signed Integer PCM

$ file TEST.wav
TEST.wav: RIFF (little-endian) data, WAVE audio

$ ffprobe.exe TEST.wav
[...]
  Duration: 00:01:31.82, bitrate: 1411 kb/s
  Stream #0:0: Audio: pcm_s16le ([1][0][0][0] / 0x0001), 44100 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 1411 kb/s

[qubodup]

Another: https://freesound.org/people/Andrewkn/sounds/839845/

[qubodup]

Still ongoing https://freesound.org/people/drummy/sounds/840411/

EDIT 2026-01-03 https://freesound.org/people/Cl%C3%A9ment_B/sounds/840737/