Ok, sound experts need a couple of answers

[a740g]

First off _sndplayfile doesn't wait for completion before moving on to next program line.  Or did I miss something ? ie: two plays directs only plays the second sound.
Must use open, play handle, do/loop until sndplaying isn't.

This is by design. The playback happens asynchronously on a separate audio thread. If you need to wait for the playback to complete before moving to another file then you'll be better off using _SNDOPEN, _SNDPLAY and _SNDPLAYING.

Second with all the sound bugs fixed and a flurry of forum message about it.  (didn't follow all the threads)  Is there a way to compile sound (wav) files into the program EXE result?  Much like ICON ico files can being included inside exe.

Use $EMBED & _EMBEDDED$ for this. You can then pass the string to _SNDOPEN using the "memory" feature.

Third is it possible to pre-load wav files into a memory array (different files at different indexes) and run from the array instead of playing files on disk?

Certainly. You can store the sound file contents in an array of STRINGs and then pass the string array with the needed index to _SNDOPEN. Then, use the "memory" feature to load the sound from memory.

Four  converting all the wav files to mp3 would make them smaller.  But would than be better for playing them ?  IMHO no difference.

Usually, one would not notice the difference at good MP3 bit rates. However, converting to MP3 certainly benefits memory and disk space.