after my audio file was corrupted because the battery of my zoom died during the taping, I was able to recover most of the audio content of my SD Card thanks to Audacity.
The problem is that the recovered audio is not useful, because it plays about 2 seconds of proper audio than it plays about two seconds of the same audio just much more quiet and then it plays 2 seconds of the proper audio again and then 2 seconds of the quiet audio. This continues for over an hour.
Did I do anything wrong when importing my raw data, or is there an easy way to fix this (for example by automatically deleting all of the quiet bits and stringing together the proper bits)?
Thank you very much for the much appreciated help!
What is the operating system and version of Audacity?
It sounds like you only have half the data, correct?
What format was the file supposed to be in originally? Import RAW only works for uncompressed audio, but if the recording is intelligible and at the right speed you probably chose the correct import parameters. An error in those parameters wouldn’t cause block-like timeline errors.
You can use Truncate Silence ( Audacity Manual ) to attempt to delete the quiet blocks.
Thank you very much for your help Gale! What is the operating system and version of Audacity?
I work with a mac 10.8.5 and Audacity 2.0.6.
I also imported the raw data into Audition and the same thing happened.
It sounds like you only have half the data, correct?
No I have it all. Actually I have it double, because the quiet bits are a repetition. I have 2 seconds of good audio and then 2 seconds of the same audio just very quiet. I would like to delete all of the quiet audio and put together the good audio. But I am not sure how I can do this precisely.
What format was the file supposed to be in originally?
It was wav originally.
Did you try Truncate Silence as I suggested? Select a very quiet bit of audio and look in Effect > Amplify… . Look at “Amplifcation (dB)”. The negative of that figure is the peak level of the selected audio. For example if it says 23 dB, the peak is -23 dB.
Cancel Amplify and select all the audio.
Try setting “Threshold” in Truncate Silence to about the same level as whatever the negative of Amplification (dB) was, or the nearest louder threshold. For example if the peak was -23 dB, set the threshold to -20 dB (the nearest choice above in the dropdown list).
Set “Duration” to 2 seconds. Set “Truncate” to 0 seconds.
Don’t necessarily expect a perfect result. We can’t see your audio. You may have to cut some of the quiet bits out by hand.