Recovering corrupt wav files? Pro tools

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zebra50

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 4, 2004
Messages
2,943
Location
York, UK
Hi,

For some reason i have one bad wav file in a recent pro tools session. I can see the file in the macos finder, but it won't play in protocols, iTunes, or QuickTime. The size of the file looks correct so I wondered if it is a corrupt header?

Does anyone have any tricks for recovering the audio from such a file? It is one of the kick drum mics and it would be nice to have it back!

Thanks loads

Stewart
 
No idea how to do it on OSX, but if all else fails, take it to someone who has any version of (windows) wavelab, sound forge or even the free wavosaur audio editor and open the file as "raw" format. You then have to manually select bitdepth and sample rate and if the file is interleaved stereo or mono, but all the audio data is most likely intact.
 
Hi Michael,

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction - looks like Audacity has the facility to import Raw audio, and is free. I'll download and give it a try.

Cheers!

Stewart
 
zebra50 said:
Hi,

For some reason i have one bad wav file in a recent pro tools session. I can see the file in the macos finder, but it won't play in protocols, iTunes, or QuickTime. The size of the file looks correct so I wondered if it is a corrupt header?

Does anyone have any tricks for recovering the audio from such a file? It is one of the kick drum mics and it would be nice to have it back!

Thanks loads

Stewart

Hi Stewart,

I had exactly the same issue on a session about 6 months back, I tried the raw approach suggested by Kingston to no avail.  Weirdly mine was also a second kick mic, a sign from gods of audio that we are overdoing it? :)

The solution was wonderfully simple - Wav Saver by Rail Jon Rogut.  Bottom left hand corner on this page - http://www.railjonrogut.com/

See a thread about it here - http://prorecordingworkshop.lefora.com/2011/02/07/raise-a-toast-to-rail-jon/

Cheers,
Ruairi


 
Thanks guys,

I did try copying to another drive - that has also worked sometimes for me in the past but not this time. I will give wav saver a go.

> Weirdly mine was also a second kick mic, a sign from gods of audio that we are overdoing it? :)

:)
I normally use an RE20 (or RE320) in the kick, and lately out of habit I have been popping in a Shure SM91 beta too. I've lost the RE20 track. Right now I am glad that I have the other mic! At least I can trigger something if I can't get the RE20 back.

Nothing succeeds like excess!

Cheers

Stewart
 
Wav saver did the trick instantly and perfectly. Many thanks for all the ideas. I am very happy!

:)

 
In situations like this and if all else fails, try Linux versions knopix or puppy. Both will load from cd as a virtual install on any computer. I found out about this trick a few years ago. All wav files in a project for some reason had corrupted data at the end of the files and thus would not play on anything. Looked like a total loss. After giving up a friend gave me knopix and unlike anything else it was able to slowly (4 ½ hours) extract each file and rebuild it. Problem solved. It also seems to work for broken drives, again slowly but it succeeded where numerous computer geeks failed.
 
zebra50 said:
Hi,

For some reason i have one bad wav file in a recent pro tools session. I can see the file in the macos finder, but it won't play in protocols, iTunes, or QuickTime. The size of the file looks correct so I wondered if it is a corrupt header?

Does anyone have any tricks for recovering the audio from such a file? It is one of the kick drum mics and it would be nice to have it back!

Thanks loads

Stewart

Hi,
its a common problem in Protools 8 and Protools 9 versions.

Use an app for MAC called Wav Fixer 8.0.3,
it fixes the wav metadata and then the files are fully functional

Saved me countless of times

all the  best
 

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