So, an older coworker of mine was having issues with getting some old audio files that were important to him to play(I think they were originally recorded off an old walkman or something), and asked me if I could get them working. I tried opening them on VLC, but despite the files being listed as .WAV, got the error message “Unidentified codec: VLC could not identify the audio or video codec”.
A quick google search said to try playing around with Audacity. Upon trying to open them with Audacity, I got the error message “Error Importing - Audacity did not recognize the type of the file VOICE.WAV. Try installing FFmpeg. For uncompressed files, also try File>Import>Raw Data.” After installing FFmpeg as directed, I still got the same error message when trying to open the file. I then tried importing as raw data, but quickly realized that I had no idea what I was doing and it just sounded like garbled noise.
I’m not sure if the problem is that then files are corrupted or just have some weird file quality from whatever device they were originally recorded on, but was hoping someone here might be able to tell me if there’s hope for recovery or not, and if so point me in the right direction to making these files usable.
That’s bad news because VLC can play almost anything… And with FFmpeg Audacity can open almost anything…
I checked one of the files with [u]MediaInfo[/u] and it says: 33.1kbps, 8000Hz, 1 channel, Dev (Micronas Semiconductors, Inc.)
That doesn’t tell me a lot, but it’s an odd format and probably compressed because 8-bits x 8kHz gives you a bitrate of 64kbps. (You can have compressed audio in a “WAV container” but it’s unusual.)
Maybe you can Google “Micronas Semiconductors audio” to see if you can find out anything.
…Opening a file as raw data won’t help if it’s compressed. Compression is sort-of like encryption and if it’s not properly decoded (decompressed) it’s going to sound like random noise/garbage.
Thanks for the info. I’ll see if he still has the device he recorded it with; he said it was damaged or something, but knowing the model might help, possibly.
He said it was something to do with his kids, so that makes sense. The fact that you can somewhat make that out at least seems to indicate that the data isn’t corrupted. Or, maybe it does; again, I know nothing about this kind of thing and literally downloaded Audacity this afternoon trying to figure it out.
You are unlikely to get a response from zeetee as his post is nearly 3 years old.
What makes you think “probably from the same player”? Have you done some analysis of your file?
That’s bad news because VLC can play almost anything… And with FFmpeg Audacity can open almost anything…