Importing raw data - detect function

Feedback and Discussion Forum
1

I had a large WAV file 2.9GB that Audacity would not open, so I used Import / Raw Data.
(It came from an Allen and Heath sound desk)
When I clicked Detect it gave
Encoding: Unsigned 8-bit PCM
Byte order: Little-endian
Channels: 1 Channel (Mono)
Start offset: 0 bytes
Amount to import: 100%
Sample rate: 44100 Hz

Values which worked were:
Encoding: Signed 24-bit PCM
Byte order: Little-endian
Channels: 2 Channels (Stereo)
Start offset: 512 bytes
Amount to import: 100%
Sample rate: 48000 Hz

These values were suggested on a web site that I now cannot find.
It would be great if Detect did a better job!
I am grateful that Audacity had a way of opening the file.

2

I don’t know how “detect” works but a raw file is just a sequence of bytes and it would need to look for patterns.

A WAV file is also a sequence of bytes but there’s a file header with all of that information so Audacity (or other application) knows how to convert the bytes into usable audio data.