The Decoder is moving to an ALSA `type file` tee, which writes float32. Read as
s16 that yields a plausible-looking file whose only tell is per-channel peaks
alternating exactly -- the two halves of each float landing in alternate
channels. My parser assumed s16 throughout and would have mis-read it
confidently.
An unreadable format now ends the run at PARTIAL (exit 2) rather than PASS:
channels were checked, starvation was not, and the tool says which. A checker
that claims a check it skipped is the shape of every failure this file documents.
AND THE FIRST VERSION OF THE GUARD WAS TOO STRICT -- it rejected one of this
tool's own controls, a six-tone file `ffprobe` correctly calls pcm_s16le, because
the file is WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE (tag 0xFFFE) rather than plain PCM. A format
guard that refuses a legitimate capture is the same defect as one that mis-reads
an illegitimate one, pointing the other way. The check turns on wBitsPerSample,
which is what decides the layout; a float tee is 32-bit and still caught.
Control sweep, now the tool's real specification and all of it runnable here:
real music+SFX bed PASS
voice track, mono, 53% real pauses PASS
six distinct tones, PCM and extensible PASS
bed with 350 ms holes punched in FAIL
the starved capture FAIL
the same tones as float32 PARTIAL
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01N7FiFFFwbvG2uxdcEh8HyF
78879dce06