I recently completed an hour-long phone interview for a Innovative Interactivity article I’m putting together. About a half hour in, the Marantz PMD-660 I was using suddenly stopped recording and I had to quickly put a halt to the questions. Strangely, the recorder was still recording information, but no sound was coming through the headphones (let that be a lesson to anyone who doesn’t monitor their audio). I asked my subject if I could call them back, checked the batteries, restarted the player and pressed record. The recorder seemed to be doing fine.
The second half of the interview went swimmingly, but when I dragged the files off the CF card the first half of the interview would not play in any of the many programs I tried it in. I can’t tell you how far my heart dropped in that moment.
I tried some data recovery software but was continually frustrated by the lack of results. Finally I ran across a suggestion to use Audacity, and holy snikes it worked! Below I’ve detailed the steps I used to save a corrupted audio file from the depths uselessness.
1. Command I – Check the file to see if there’s information. On a Mac that’s as simple as single clicking the file and pressing command I. When I did this I noticed the file had roughly the same amount of information the second half of the interview did, so I figured the data was there.
2. Download Audacity - Next I downloaded and installed the free audio editing software Audacity. Audacity has been around for awhile, and it’s a favorite for its ease of use and surprising flexibility.
3. Import Raw Data – Open Audacity and go to File>Import>Raw Data. Select the corrupted file and press Open. An Import Raw Data dialogue will pop up. I just left all the options as default. Audacity will import the data, and if you see a waveform, you’re probably in luck! From this point I tested the file and was pleased to hear the previously unplayable interview loud and clear.
4. Export – After I determined the file was playable, I went to File>Export and chose AIFF from the drop down list. This allowed me to save the file to my desktop. I will say that somewhere in this process the sound quality was affected (my voice sounds deeper and more warbly than usual) but since I was using the audio for notes, it all worked out pretty well considering.
I can’t promise that this process will work for everyone, but it was worthy of some serious celebration on my end.
Happy saving!
