No audio on playback

[Hedy]

I would be very grateful if someone could please help me. I'm on Mac OS X 10.6.7 and am unable to hear audio on playback of my Audacity 1.2.5 project.
All of the levels on Audacity and my laptop appear to be fine. I have been reading Audacity's File Management Tips and I think my problem is a missing dependent file.
I didn't know I needed to make a copy of the file before editing. I have followed the instructions to open the .aup Project file in textedit and noted the path for the aliasfile, but the path leads back to my digital recorder. Unfortunately, I needed to reuse the recorder's memory card and so I erased the file, thinking it was saved in Audacity.
Is there anything else I can do to recover my interview?
Thanks ever so much!

[kozikowski]

I'm on Mac OS X 10.6.7 and am unable to hear audio on playback of my Audacity 1.2.5 project.

Can we assume your playback does not have bouncing green lights and blue waves like this...

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_playback.jpg

Is there anything else I can do to recover my interview?

Probably not. One of Audacity's little nasty tricks is not pulling musical data into itself for editing (unless you change the default). Instead, it edits the music file and then puts it back -- on your recorder in this case. If you close the project and then re-open it later, it does it all again -- goes looking for your recorder. The only local sound inside the /DATA folder will be the portions that you applied effects to. People who get burned with this complain that their transitions and interstitials all sound perfect, but the straight interview in the middle is gone.

If you haven't used the memory card yet, you may be able to recover the interview with a data recovery program, but the process is painful and it doesn't have a good success rate.

You can go into Audacity > Preferences > Import/Export > "Make a copy of uncompressed audio files...." If you do that, all the music data will be in the /DATA folder and Audacity will no longer reference external files. You could have other problems, but that one will go away.

Being compulsive, the first thing I do with a valuable interview is make a copy of the raw music file outside of any editor.

This problem is a sore point with the elves on the forum.

Koz

[Hedy]

Thanks ever so much for taking the time to reply. You have confirmed my worst suspicions and I learned a lesson the hard way.
Hedy

[kozikowski]

Any chance of running an (un-delete) program on the chip?

Do you understand that when you "delete" something, it doesn't actually attack the data (unless you take extraordinary measures). It just scrambles the "table of contents" and leaves the "book" alone. It also marks the place where the "book" resides as available for new work, so if you haven't used the chip yet, the book -- the interview -- may still be there.

This process drives security agencies nuts as you an well imagine. Apple has a "secure erase" feature that goes in and thoroughly scrambles everything.

If your work is Once In A Lifetime interview, there are companies that may be able to rescue the work. Google you brains out.

Koz