As a note for anyone later having the same white noise at the end of a track with a first gen WDTV Live, that has the same problem and the response from WD was not positive when I raised the issue. Even gave them the standards :-(
In case anyone is interested, a technical note about wav & aif files: such files comprise linear pcm audio data sandwiched between a so called RIFF header at the start, and the ID3v2 tag data / album art at the end. As horse says, the WAV and AIF formats are well and publicly documented.
If you hear a click at the start of a track, it means the player tried to convert the RIFF header into sound, and if you hear white noise at the end, it means the player tried to convert the tags and album art into sound.
If your player outputs such clicks or white noise, this is fundamentally unacceptable from any self respecting manufacturer. It is simply shoddy programming, and shows that the programmers were too lazy to read or implement the most basic of specs. I would guess their test procedure was something like "yeah buddy there's sound coming out; ok that's fine then..." => So you should definitely give WD (and any other player manufacturer) hell for responding in such a patronising way.
PS the good news is that if you set MC to do Always Convert / L16 No header, it strips the RIFF header from the start and the tags & album art from the end, and simply feeds the remaining intervening pcm audio data straight to your player unmolested. (In the case of wav just swapping the byte order).
=> Hats off to the MC team who do things properly!!