Recovering files

[kozikowski]

<<<Could you give me some example of a format, that way I would know what I'm doing and not mess up.>>>

There are a number of different ways to digitize audio. Each one is a different format -- some are cousins of each other. 44100, 16-bit, Stereo is the format of the music on a Music CD. 48000, 16-bit, Stereo is the format of digital television sound. Both of those are PCM.

Many different formats grew up around specific jobs and tasks. MP3 is a format that adds distortion with the idea of making sound files take up much less room on a hard drive -- or digital download. AAC is another one used by Apple in the Macs and iPods. Those have a bitrate associated with them to describe their quality. 32K is a barely OK mono MP3. 64K is a good mono MP3, but a barely OK Stereo MP3, and so on up.

Koz

[steve]

<<<copy a picture and paste it on the clipboard as it was playing.>>>

I wonder if the system didn't try to make this performance into a movie file. Can you tell what kind of icon is associated with the file? Instead of forcing it to play in Audacity, what happens if you just double click it? Or have you been here already?

Koz

I've never used MusicMatch Jukebox, so I've no idea what might have happened or why, but yes, that would be worth trying.

what do you mean by "format"? Could you give me some example of a format,

With regard to importing RAW data, an example would be:

Encoding: Signed 16 bit PCM
Channels: 2 (stereo)
Sample Rate: 44100 Hz

For the "Byte order" try "default-endianness"

[kubrickfan10]

I've double-clicked it God knows how many times! And it still doesn't work! So I'll try it on Audacity and cross my finger!

[kubrickfan10]

I am right now trying to import my file in Audacity. But two things I really need help on:

1) In the Start Offset part, they're asking for bytes. What should I put in, since I'm looking in the file's properties and it has both the size itself and the size on disk?

2) What does it mean "little-endian", "no endian", "big-endian" and "default endian"?

[steve]

1) In the Start Offset part, they're asking for bytes

Leave that at zero. If you get everything else correct then the effect of leaving this at zero will give you a bit of noise in the first millisecond or so.

2) What does it mean "little-endian", "no endian", "big-endian" and "default endian"?

It's the "byte order" for multi-byte numbers.
big-endian gives the most significant byte first, whereas little-endian gives the least significant byte first.
If the file was created on/originally worked on your computer, then default endianness should be correct.
(more information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness ... hitectures )

[kubrickfan10]

Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU!!!!! I finally got my file fixed! Thank you soooooooo much for all of your help! Now I have one more question about that loud noise at the first milliosecond: is there any way to fix that?

But if not, who cares? At least it's fixed. Once again, THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

[steve]

Congratulations
To be honest I'm pleasantly surprised that it worked - I was more than half expecting the file to be unreadable or so badly damaged as to just produce garbage, but I'm very happy that it has worked out.

I have one more question about that loud noise at the first milliosecond: is there any way to fix that?

Just select it (click on the track and drag the mouse across to the beginning of the track), then delete it (press the DEL key, or select Delete from the Edit menu.

To "save" your recovered audio as a normal audio file - use "Export as WAV" (from the File menu) and to be safe, give it a new file name.

[kubrickfan10]

Remember, this is my first time using Audacity. So frankly--and I apologize if I'm sounding too pushy (if that's the right term for it, I think)--I'm not getting what you're saying. Like step by step, how do I do it?

[kubrickfan10]

Never mind! I figured it out! I got rid of the annoying screeching noise! Thanks for that instruction there! I read into it closely and figured it all out. Thank you so much once again! You were a GREAT help!