I’m glad you were able to recover your recording. Thanks for the word. 
I have read through most all of this, and it is disheartening to see how much problems there are related to an aup3 file getting corrupted. I tried the fix, but it did nothing, though it says that it created a repaired file. Still wouldn’t open. I think that all I did to “corrupt” it was to change the name, after it was saved. . .in a typical way one can change the name of about anything else. Changing the name BACK to the original, did not fix it. To come to find, that this otherwise stable program, can have ones work completely inaccessible with virtually nothing having been done, is amazing. The steps necessary to hopefully repair it, is amazing in complexity, for a lot of users. It seems as though the file corruption problem would be of high priority, and the tools to repair files, would be built in to the actual program. I am now, very worried of the 100s of recordings I have done, that I did not realize that the whole thing could be broken so easily. It has made me rethink my reliance upon Audacity. It never has been as good as “Bias Peak and Deck”; but, for some reason, they quit developing, years ago.
This is both a rant, a request for help, and assurance that this program remains stable. Who can afford to place 100s of hours into something that becomes unusable, and irreparable?
I agree it can be very frustrating being in that position.
I’m not clear from what you wrote whether you have one or more corrupted. If it’s a small number, could you post how many files are affected and how large the aup3 files are, please?
Agreed, and Mac users are not catered for at all.
I don’t think it was always like that. Some older versions were more reliable/stable.
Could you perhaps outline what you use Audacity for and maybe someone can offer ideas for something that might suit you better?
Mark B
Hello. Thanks for the response.
At this point, I only know of ONE. . .but this has made me VERY afraid of what I am going to find. I am in the middle of digitizing all of my Vinyl. That step is done, all in aup3 files. I made manual copies of these files and renamed one to “ORIG”, as a source copy that I could go back to if something went wrong. Now, it seems that every one of these could be corrupt by this process. I will find out as I work through it.
The current one that started my alarm was almost 100% complete. But I wanted to go on to something else, so I SAVED it, closed it. A few minutes later, I realized that I didn’t like the way I had named the file, so made a somewhat minor adjustment to the name. I seems as though it will never open again.
I made a copy of my “ORIG”, renamed this, opened it, made several adjustments to the file; saved it and then renamed it again, similarly. Again. . .the file will not open, whereas I tried to open it after I saved and closed it, but had not renamed it. ..and it opened fine. JUST the renaming of it seems to do this.
I too am on a MAC. . .but I know my way around a PC to some degree as well. So I tried the “repair” on my PC. . .the results are what I posted.
The Corrupt file is 300 MB.
The sort of process described, as in digitizing my vinyl or editing simple audio, removing clicks, pops, etc., is mainly what I use Audacity for.
At least two of the forum moderators routinely advise exporting your captured audio as WAV, even before saving an Audacity project. This is sound advice. That way your capture is safe even if your Audacity project stuffs up big time.
I’ve never tried this. I’ll give it a go.
Could you upload it to Dropbox or Google Drive - if you have either - and share a link so I can download it and have a look, please?
For basic stuff, you could try Ocenaudio. It’s free, faster and more stable than Audacity and it doesn’t use project files, just audio. I’ve taken to using Ocenaudio and Audacity in tandem. Audacity is better suited to certain tasks.
Mark B
I am one of those Forum elves and I even wrote the same advice in more than one place in the Audacity Manual.
When I digitized my LPs and tapes many years ago my workflow involved.
- Record the whole LP
- place labels for each song start position
- export each song as a separate WAV file using File > Export Multiple
- immediately back up the WAVS in a folder for the album on two external USB hard drives
- Import the album’s WAVs into iTunes
- Use iTunes to convert to files to MP3 or AAC
- Sync my iPod(s)
Step 4 means that I now still have a duplicate set of WAV files for every album and tape that I digitized - in fact a triplicate copy as I also maintain a third offsite copy (so far offsite it’s in another country) which I can revisit to re-edit if I even need too. As WAVs these are excellent excellent uncompressed copies of each song, unlike the compressed MP3s/AACs in my iTunes.
Note that as part of my workflow I never exported the whole LP as a single WAV file, just the individual song WAVs, nor did I ever Save the temporary project.
BTW the WAVs came in useful when I bought I hi-fi “jukebox” a sort of mains iPod with a 1TB disk which is plumbed into my hi-fi system, it meant I could use the uncompressed WAVs to get the best uncompressed quality.
For more details of my workflow see this page in the Audacity Manual:
where I note that at step 6 I recommended a WAV copy of the complete album before further editing, even though I never actually did that myself 
Peter
If your iTunes software can import a FLAC file, then saving them instead of WAV files would save space and nothing would be lost the way it would be using MP3 files. FLAC is to audio what PNG is to images.
Hi Rex,
256 MP3s and AACs are fine for my portable listening on iPod (enough room for my entire digitized record and tape collection on 1 160GB iPod - FLACs would be too big). I listen via a paiir if foldable Bowers & Wilkins headphones - surprisingly good sound for compressed audio.
For hi-fi use I have WAV files on a hi-fi “jukebox” a Cocktail Audio X30 with a 1TB disk which feeds my QUAD ESL-57 electrostatic speakers - truly excellent sound.
Peter.
I am trying to upload to Google Drive. For some reason. . .it is SLOW. I will respond with a link, if I can ever get it there.
Thanks for the advise and the link to Ocenaudio. It is worth taking a look at. The Spectrogram feature reminds me of the old BIAS-Sound Soap days. . .to me a better controllable algorithm -based program for scrubbing unwanted noise, than what I have seen these days. . .but I certainly have not tried them all.
I paid a fair amount in the day for the BIAS Software. . .then they went ‘belly-up’. It seems like with all of the PAID versions of anything, there is a big risk of they discontinuing development and leaving you and all of the proprietary file types, in the dust, and all of your work along with it. . .OR they start pushing and manipulating you into a never ending milking and dependency.
Everyone, should have told APPLE and ADOBE, and MICROSOFT, to go “pound sand” 10 years ago. Instead, everyone found their position in the milk-station. . .and they are properly “hooked up”. Most all of the better software, are now subscription. Good for them, bad for us cows. Where I can, which is mostly, I completely avoid it.
I actually do, finally save my finished Audio in AIFF, both the whole and broken out into tracks. I have always assumed that AIFF was MACs equivalent to WAV. What do you think? I see one has suggest saving to FLAC. . .but I have not used this, and I am afraid that this poses another file type that is not as easy to find software to utilize. . .but again, I am not experienced with it. I suppose it is like APPLES M4a. I also save, while I am doing it, all of the Tracks singly and as a whole into mp3.
What made my situation new to me, was that I usually work on a project until it is done, including the Exports. This time I didn’t. . .AND I changed the file name.
Thank you for these detailed instructions. This IS actually very similar to my work-flow, with the exception that I save to AIFF not WAV and I also export, from Audacity, into the mp3 for portable use.
It just seems strange to me that Audacity files are so easily corrupted, and the actual audio is not easily extracted for another try.
I am interested in the FLAC file. I am completely unfamiliar with it. Can you list all of it’s benefits? I am a bit afraid of it, as it seems another file type that might not be as easy to find software to utilize and manipulate it.
What is your belief concerning the difference between AIFF, WAV, and FLAC?
Having tried the options available in the Audacity project tools and not managed to fix it, I thought I’d chance my arm using the project parser Python script by @kryksyh. That worked a treat. I don’t know why but I’m glad it did. I guess the guy with the broken project is too.
You Betcha!
@HALLANM could you describe in details what were you doing when the project got corrupted? Could you try to break it again?
I was just talking to the OP on email and have told him about your message. His is the file I mentioned in the PM a few mins ago. I still have that.
I was doing a simple workflow, that I have done countless times. I was even more careful with the latest file, because of the issues I have been having.
I had about 3/4 of the work done; various waveform manipulation, pop removal, normalization of audio level, etc.. . .I got tired, decided to finish next day. Saved it, as I normally would, closed the window. . .I don’t think I quit Audacity. Just to have peace of mind, I reopened the file, and it was fine. Made ZERO changes, so just closed the window, and then quit Audacity. Next morning. . .today. . .went to access file. . .and CORRUPT.
HM
Hard to break intentionally, as it seems to break during a normal process. . .without warning. The ONLY thought that I had was that the difference between closing the window, and actually shutting down Audacity, might be a deciding factor. Something residual remains, that allows it to reopen the file. But once it is completely shut down, that is discarded, and then unrecoverable
But again. . .I have many files that have not broken in this way. But it seems like once waveform manipulation has been done. . .it become increasingly more likely to break.
HM
Hmm, the common pattern in the recent corruption reports is that the project was opened and immediately closed without any modifications. I’ll look into it.
@HALLANM when you reopened the file, did you open the empty audacity window first? And what audacity version were you using at that time?
Sorry it takes me awhile to respond. Not only do I suspect we have a time difference, but on top of these problems, this Audacity Forum will NOT allow me to log-in on my MAC! It says I am not using a supported Browser, though I have the latest Firefox, which I am also using on my PC, without issue. I have tried using other Browsers on my MAC. . .and they all come up as “unsupported Browser”!!! UGH!. . .so I have to keep working between computers.
I directly opened the file, by double clicking it. . . .a lot quicker than opening Audacity and then navigating to the desired file.
I am using the latest version of Audacity available for the MAC. . . I am using Mojave 10.14.6.
HM