Audacity Recovery Utility = bad magic number error

[sullivanandco]

Hi folks!

Huge, enormous Audacity fan here. Here's my problem: my boss accidentally deleted the "_data" folders for some recording he did.

I managed to recover at least some of the .au files, but I need to be able to put them together to see what we actually have. Unfortunately, the Audacity Recovery Utility is giving me the dreaded "Error: bad magic number" after I click "Yes" to the alert window "Information: 2 continuous blocks of .au files were found.Do you want to recover these files?" So I went back to the wiki as directed... http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... shRecovery

123 Audio Video Merger, supposed to be at http://www.manitools.com/123avm/ isn't.

SoX is available, but I quickly got lost in all of the coding snippets and suggestions. Can anyone here with Mac-specific knowledge help me out? THANKS!

I'm running 10.5.8 on a 2x 2.66 Dual-Core Intel Xeon Pro; Audacity 2.0.0.

[steve]

123 Audio Video Merger, supposed to be at http://www.manitools.com/123avm/ isn't.

Thanks. It appears that the author's website is dead, so I've updated the link to Softpedia where it is still available.
Unfortunately that does not help you as it's Windows only.

If the audio that you are trying to piece back together is not too long, this Nyquist plug-in may help: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 58#p151858
(make sure that you download the "latest version" and read the included help screens).

[sullivanandco]

If the audio that you are trying to piece back together is not too long, this Nyquist plug-in may help: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 58#p151858
(make sure that you download the "latest version" and read the included help screens).

Got it, thank you Steve! Unfortunately I noticed that some of the files are MASSIVE (one is 3GB, one is 26 ! GB) -- which probably explains why it choked on them! Oddly, when I whittled it down to the files that weren't huge and used your Append Import, I got a few noises and three identical reads of "This is a test. This is only a test". But... the file sizes that are involved are completely different from each other: 19MB, 104MB, and 27MB.

Here's the WEIRDER thing: I just noticed that I can preview .au files in the Finder, and all three files (of completely different sizes) play the same "test" voice clip -- which I suspect is something related to the file type and/or the system, because my boss was recording women -- and it doesn't sound like him either.

...any other ideas? Any thoughts on the supreme weirdness? Thank you sir!

[steve]

I managed to recover at least some of the .au files,

I noticed that some of the files are MASSIVE (one is 3GB, one is 26 ! GB)

The .au files should be 1 MB with a few .au files smaller than that.
The limiting factor of that plug-in is that the data needs to be loaded into RAM so, for example, to load 1000 .au files there needs to be over 1 GB free and available.

[sullivanandco]

I realized when I saw those sizes that the plug-in wouldn't work for me.

But so... do you think what I have probably aren't really .au files? And any idea what the "Testing..." audio preview is all about?

Thanks for all your help, Steve!

[steve]

do you think what I have probably aren't really .au files

Audacity data files (.au) are up to 1 MB in size, so they are not valid Audacity data files.

any idea what the "Testing..." audio preview is all about?

You mean in the "Finder" thing?
Sorry, I'm not a Mac user so I don't know anything about Finder.