Corrupted audio

I've been using a Samson C01U USB microphone to record vocal audio files using Audacity 1.2.6, they are saved as 16 bit AIFF files for playback using Quicktime PRO. Two days ago I noticed the quality was starting to degrade and was sounding muffled with too much bass. I have several fans in the room and thought I might be picking up too much ambient noise so I downloaded and installed Samson's SoftPre applet in order to use the high-pass filter and clip the lower frequencies.
The applet completely destroyed the sound quality making the recorded file almost unintelligible and trimmed at least 15 dB from the input level. I've been trying to restore everything with no luck. I'm positive it's a software issue because I can still use the same microphone, cable, and Audacity on both a G4 Cube running OS 10.3.9 and an IBM Thinkpad running Windows XP with perfect results.
There was no uninstall utility for SoftPre so I used AppZapper to clear the app and the .plist file. No luck. Next I trashed com.apple.audio.DeviceSettings.plist and com.apple.soundpref.plist (after saving copies). Again, no luck. I've tried all four of the USB input jacks on the G5, trashed and reinstalled Audacity and rebooted more times than I care to mention. I'm waiting to hear from their tech support.
Recording a new audio file in Quicktime Pro, Audacity or Audio Recorder all produce the same trashy, garbled result. The Audio Input settings for the microphone in Audio MIDI Setup are 44100 Hz, 1ch-16bit and everything from iTunes to Flip4Mac WMV all playback without a problem.
Any reasonable ideas?

Just a stupid idea.....
Did you check the input volume in Audio preferences?
cheers
rob

Similar Messages

8 bit / corrupted audio files on re-opening a song

See the post below. I'm having this exact problem with the latest version of Logic Pro on my intel mac. Is there a solution for this mentioned somewhere already? Please let me know soon.
Joshua Brown
Posts: 7
Registered: Aug 18, 2005
"8-bit" Corrupted Audio Files On Reload?
Posted: Aug 18, 2005 10:45 AM
A day after a recording session with my band the other night, I re-opened the song and recieved an error message "What kind of file is this?" and then another... something about the file being "8-bit" and unusable. This is the bass track from a very good session with my band and I'd like to try and recover it. Does anyone know how this happened, how to recover the file, and how to prevent it from happening in the future? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
More info: When opening the file in SoundHack, it says that it is a "Headerless" file. Setting the header to 24 bit linear and saving a copy results in an extremely distorted and unusable file, but you can kind of hear the recording in the background... sped up.

Hello and thanks to all for your replies. Oh and I did in fact copy somebody else's post. Sorry for the confusion.
I had a backup of the song on another disk with which I continued with my mixing. I am not worried about that particular song now. I am just worried that this might happen again.
About my sound/sample library, I just deleted the folders which had corrupted files and copied back from my backup disks.
Dropping corrupted file in a new .lso doesn't work. Haven't tried moving preferences yet but will do. I didn't have a mac before I bought an intel mac.
Can someone explain why this happened in the newest version when this was supposed to have been resolved in an earlier version? Isn't the latest version a cumulative one?
There's one other thing that also happened with me this week. I think it's related:
I had a Logic project open which was set at 96/24 and I had some audio done in it. I tried to open Reason rewired to Logic because I wanted a drum beat from Dr.Rex. Reason was set at 44/16. I tried to open some of the samples from my sound library. The files played just fine but later on when I checked, the folders which I went into looking for that drum beat got corrupted. In fact, it corrupted everything under root folder. It shouldn't have touched my samples at all, right? Why should this happen when I'm trying to just read samples or files?

Corrupt audio file prevents me from opening Logic project file

Hello,
I've been running Logic 8 for a couple years off my MacBook and have never encountered any significant problems of file corruption until recently.
The issue I encountered is this:
I've been producing a lengthy track in an on-going Logic project file for some time and after completing a recording session I saved and started deleting excess track copies to clean up my arrange window. Upon doing so Logic unexpectedly crashed.
After attempting to reopen the project file, it started its normal process of loading its respective audio files, but now it hangs on one particular audio file indefinitely (I'll refer to it as 'audio file x' for ease of reference), freezing and crashing Logic as a result. All of this project file's auto backup files are also incapable of being opened without giving me the same result and crashing Logic.
I have no way of opening this project file and getting at my most recent saved sequence!
I've tried removing this corrupt 'audio file x' from the project's audio folder and dragging it to the desktop, but this had no effect and I still can't open any recent version of the project file.
Older saved copies of the current project file do still open though (most likely because they were saved prior to the corruption caused by this suspect 'audio file x.') When opening an earlier iteration of the project, I get a message '1 invalid audio region found' (I assume referring to the corrupt suspect 'audio file x' that I removed to the desktop) but the project file is still able to open.
I realize I could import the audio files from the most recent version of the crashed file to an older project version and reconstruct things back to the way they were, but it would take me a lot of time and I'm hoping there may be some way to recover the un-openable project file by getting it to stop looking for this corrupted 'audio file x' on startup.
When I click 'show package contents' of the Logic Project file, I notice two items labeled 'displayState' and 'documentData.' From my troubleshooting I've come to the basic understanding that the 'documentData' file contains all the sequence data and settings for its respective Logic Project file.
I think the 'document data' of the unopenable project file in question may be corrupt because whenever I replace it with the 'document data' from an earlier Project file version, the file is able to open. This doesn't do me much good though, because it's document data from an earlier iteration of the project and I need to be able to get at the current sequence I had right before my file crashed.
Is there anyway to open a project file without letting it load its audio files? Or is there anyway I could get inside the 'document data' file to delete the reference/pathway in its audio bin to the corrupt 'audio file x' its hanging on?
Any insights would be greatly appreciated. I'm hoping there's some way I won't have to repeat a couple days worth of work. Thanks for your help!

stooby3535 wrote:
After further troubleshooting I've realized that the suspicious audio file that prevents the project file from opening is actually not corrupted itself. I can still play the audio file in other media software like Quicktime, etc. with no problem.
This leads me to believe the problem opening the project file lies solely with the corrupted 'documentData' file.
Does anyone have any ideas about how I could somehow open this project file and delete the reference of the troublesome audio file from the project's audio bin?
Well... it really sounds like the project itself is corrupted, that's one of the reasons all project files won't load from a certain point on.
Try this.
Reboot the Mac.
Open the Applications folder and boot Logic from it's icon.
As soon as the Logic Logo/graphic window appears on the screen hold down the control key. You will see a message pop up that says something like "Launch the Core Audio Driver" there will be yes/no choice available... select NO.
Go to the File menu and selct "open" go find your project file and see if it will open. If it does.. delete the audio file in question... however.. I would also look at any plugins you recently installed and are possibly using in this project...this sounds more like a plugin problem rather than an audio file problem, but that's just a gut feeling.
Anyway, if it opens delete whatever you suspect and save under a different name.
Reboot Logic and see if it can load the project.
pancenter-

Choppy movie, corrupted audio

My computer does not support a Quartz Extreme Compatible Graphic Card. I have an iMovie that became choppy and now has corrupted audio. Could this have happened when I upgraded from standard iMovie to iMovieHD? The iMovie may have been originally created in standard iMovie and upgraded when I opened the file after installing the upgrade. I have some iMovies created using VHS clips which are also corrupted. I have tried deleting the iMovies preferences, which did not help. The iMovie will run fine with the audio deleted. The entire movie, audio and video runs fine on my iBook G4 with the same version of iMovie.

Choppy playback, sometimes called stutter, can occur when a project contains many audio clips. iMovie 6 is a bit more sensitive to the number of clips than earlier versions, which may explain why the problem began after converting.
Here's a (long) description of the problem, offering several workarounds:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2597033#2597033
Karl

Corrupt audio files

i'm 3 months into cutting a short film and have noticed that every once in a while some of my music tracks (in aif format) seem to get corrupted. The head of the clip is sometimes not accurate. Almost as if it randomly picks up a few notes or seconds into the original piece of media.
Does this happen after multiple dissolves and renders have been added and taken away?
It's a little frustrating as many of my edits are music-driven.
(i.e. the film would be very boring without the time spent on the music cues).

I have the exact same problem and was actually going to post my own forum on this.
I've had issues with .aiff or .wav audio clips mixed with other layers of audio. When the Aif/Wavs are rendered the first time they are usually fine. But usually if a change is made and it needs to render again FCP seems to merge the two render files together; even being visible in the waveform. Other than listening to the cut and hearing a hit in a song that isn't supposed to be there, there's no way of telling it's happened.
It's a huge headache because everything I cut is to music. I wind up having to check each section of music to see if anything funky popped up. The only workaround I've found is to keep old sequences available so I can just paste in the non-corrupted audio.

Solve my corrupted audio problem for $$ and eternal gratitude

My video project has corrupted audio suddenly. I've read about other audio problems when exporting, but all I did was save the project while editing, no export. I have the prefs set to extract audio at pasteover, which I've done a lot of for this 2-camera wedding shoot. I also have the second audio track occasionally used for background music. All three tracks (video, audio 1, audio 2) on the timeline have corrupted audio for the entire length of the project. It sounds like a helicopter whirr was added, it's very choppy. Also, both cpus are maxxed out and the process monitor shows iMovie utilizing 180%+ consistently. When iMovie isn't running, it's in the single digits. As soon as I load iMovie the cpus max out. This hasn't happened the whole project, just recently. So what changed? I don't know. I've been doing the same thing the whole time, the pasteovers, the add titles, the add background track, saving the project every couple of minutes. Each time I've saved, it looks like it's listing off different files or clips, not just the changed clips. I've tried deleting the QT movie it created in the cache and let it recreate to see if that would help, but it didn't. Would deleting the files in the waveform cache help? I've got about 30 hours into this project already and would love to resurrect this audio if possible. Either that or it's Jim Beam and call it a day. I thought this was non-destructive editing, but apparently that's just the originals? That doesn't help much when the whole project audio goes in the toilet and I'm looking at redoing this whole project. Anyone who can fix this is getting a big ol' sloppy kiss on the mouth and an iTunes gift certificate.

I've never personally seen the audio problems you describe, but there's some things I'd try before giving up. As you've probably read, it's not unusual to have playback problems in projects containing complex audio. The odds for it seem to increased in QuickTime 7.
1. Try opening the "TimeLine Movie.mov" that's inside the Cache folder of the project in QuickTime Player. If the audio plays okay there, the audio data is intact and you're seeing a playback anomaly in iMovie. (QuickTime Player may choke too, but don't conclude anything from that.)
To access the movie, Control-click on the project icon and choose "Show Package Contents".
2. Try exporting ONLY the project audio to an AIFF file, then import THAT back into the project and replace the audio you have. That will "flatten" the audio and make it much easier to play. (To be safe, on a copy of the project.)
Or if you have QuickTime Pro, you might try extracting all the audio from the Timeline movie.
To export to an AIFF file, choose File > Export, click on QuickTime, set the popUp menu to "Expert Settings", press Share, then from the top popUp menu, choose "Sound to AIFF". Choose the level of quality you want from the bottom popUp menu, then Save.
What may be going on here is that extracting audio has created MANY audio files in the project, some possibly very large. (Each time we extract audio from a clip that is part of a Media file shared with other clips, iMovie extracts ALL the audio from that Media file, not just the audio of the selected clip.) To see what audio files the project contains, look in the Media folder of the project.
If you get this solved, please say how.
Oh, and if you haven't updated to iMovie 7.1, you might try that. There were improvements in handling multiple audio tracks, I read somewhere.
BTW, it's usually not a good idea to change things inside the project package. iMovie can get pretty confused. The Timeline movie is replaced each time we save, so that's not a big deal.
Karl

OS X 10.5.6: High RAM usage corrupts Audio Playback and Volume Control

Software Effected or Related:
iTunes 8.1, Quicktime 7.4, Adobe CS3
Description:
Basically any RAM intensive operation seems to corrupt the sound driver so that static is injected into the stream. In addition, volume control fails to function, with decrease of volume controls resulting in a louder more corrupted signal being sent to the speakers.
Attempted Fixes:
RAM swapped, no effect.
Permissions repaired, no effect.
PR Zapped, no effect.
Reinstalled OS, no effect.
Workaround:
It's in no way ideal, but once the corruption occurs, a reboot of the machine will restore function until the next RAM intensive operations causes the problem again. It's at best an annoying band aid.
Notes:
I'm not really expecting a solution, more as I want to find out if anyone else is having a similar issue to my own. If this system behavior sounds familiar, please reply and let me know about your system. This behavior only started for me when my company migrated to OS 10.5. A downgrade is not an option, due to software compatibility issues. Thanks for your attention.

I am having that exact same issue with my new MacBook Pro. I notice faint bursts of static like the audio is trying to break through and then it is lost all together. I trash my sound prefs (both Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Preferences and reboot which corrects it, but then it happens again within a few days (or hours)... what gives? What is corrupt and what file do I need to permanently replace? Do I need to call Apple about this on a new machine?
Message was edited by: SWLinPHX

5.1 sound blaster audio is giving corrupted audio while playing movies

Hi Frenz,?am using sound blaster 5. sound card with creative inspire 5. speakers... when playing movies, it gives very corrupted & disturbed?audio like a repeated one... there is no 5. audio ouput, only front & center speakers work... can any one plz help me out of this problem?...

Read this.
The same principles apply to your 5.1 mix.

Corrupt audio on transferred videos

iPhone 4 with iOS 7.1.2. Audio on videos play fine on my phone, but when the file is transferred to my PC, the audio is garbled/corrupt. I've tried playing the transferred files with various programs, Windows Media Player, Quick Time, etc. No help. This problem exists on ALL videos transferred to my PC, but does not occur when transferred to YouTube. Solution?

Something freaky just happened the audio transfered but the visual didn't.Now I'm more confused than ever.
Keran

How To Recover corrupted Audio Recording from Word?

I was recording a lecture and when I tried to end the recording my mac froze. I then restarted my mac and found 2 quicktime logo files in the trashcan which i promptly took out. Problem is that they wouldn't play. I tried VLC, Audacity, Qucktime, Itunes, Real player (error 2048). I was about to gve up when I converted the file to an .mp3 and lo and behold 40 minutes is on there. I tried to pal it and it still doest play. IT's about 14.5 MB. I really need to fix this so any advice is greatly appreciated

Actually Word froze not my mac. I restrrted because I heard that you can revoer your audio fili n the trashcan if you do that. I also checked the autorecovery, only the notes were there not the recording.

Corrupted audio when exporting in Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2

Hello, I am a sound designer and have been evaluating Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2 as an alternative to Pro Tools (I work with video editors who use FCP). The program has been working well until I have tried to export my work.
I have created a project containing audio of the same sample rate as both the project and the computer's hardware - 48kHz (eliminating a problem already highlighted by others) and using no DSP. Although realtime playback is fine, the exported audio contains blocks silence as well as wrongly mixed levels.
I have noticed firstly that the problem changes depending on where the loop markers are set. The problem is sometimes eliminated if there is a reasonable amount of silence at the beginning and end of the region being exported. Secondly, I notice that fades are not being exported correctly - either being exported as silence or as full level (as if there is no fade applied).
I have also tried using Soundtrack Pro version 1, and this exports fine. It's worth noting, however, that this version of the software does not allow the user to apply fades to the audio (without opening and editing the waveform itself).
Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I know the problem you mean - the plugin settings are lost when exporting. I think this is a separate issue that has been fixed. An example of the problem would be when adding a fade to a sound, and then exporting. The fade portion of the sound would export as silence, but the rest of the sound would export fine. Very bizarre, and if no-one else is experiencing it, possibly it is to do with my machine. Unfortunately it makes the software unusable for me. My colleague, who is running the same setup as me, has exactly the same problem.
The main thing I like about Soundtrack is the ability to add effects non-destructively to each sound, and then go back and edit each effect later on. Also, the video display is good- showing you the video at the beginning and end of a sound when moving it, plus also where your mouse pointer is clicked. It has the potential to be a very good program.
Pro Tools HD is very good but very expensive. I know some people who don't like it, so I think its down to personal preference. It is used in every professional studio I have worked in, making it good for compatibility. You also won't find nasty bugs like the one i've described in Soundtrack - they've been developing the software for a long time. Personally, I find Pro Tools very quick to work with and very stable. Also, I would recommend Pro Tools LE if you're not going to be restricted by 48 tracks and lack of surround mixing.

Corrupted audio in video served up to QT 7.6.6 via SMIL files

We've been providing access to recorded QT video materials via SMIL playlists to QuickTime player embed-ed into web pages for some time and until the recent 7.6.6 update had no trouble with playback.
Now when clients who have updated to 7.6.6 view a movie via our SMIL file the video plays ok but its audio is stuttered and distorted, to the point of being incomprehensible. If the same videos are played back directly (ie the qtsrc attrib points directly at the media file) the video and audio play back fine. And if the video is downloaded to the clients desktop it also plays back ok.
This problem is present on Windows Vista and Windows 7, and in recent versions of Firefox and IE. We do not see this problem on our OSX test machines.
Here's a sample of the kind of embed we're using, with qtsrc pointing to the SMIL file in this case:
<embed
id="main_movie" type="video/quicktime"
src="http://OURSERVER.COM/smallplaceholder.mov"
scale="tofit" controller="false" autoplay="true" bgcolor="#000000" enablejavascript="true"
qtsrc="http://OURSERVER.COM/OURPLAYLIST.smi?id=HASHOFID&format=quicktime&playli st=0418060http://OURSERVER.COM/data/FILENAME.mp4;"
align="center" height="180" width="320">
And here's a sample SMIL file as served up to browsers...
<smil>
<body>
<seq>
<video src="http:/OURSERVER.COM/sample_mpeg4.mp4"/>
</seq>
</body>
</smil>
note: although our SMIL files usually reference our own encoded mp4 media we see the same problem if the playlist points to other sources, including the sample QT files from apple.com
If anyone can suggest how we might solve this, or think of further information that might lead to us solving this problem please reply here and I can furnish it.
thanx in advance,
Dean

I was able to fix this problem with QT SMIL movies by opening them in the QT Player on Windows and showing the AV Controls (under the Window menu). By moving the Pitch Shift control slightly to the left, it cured the gabled audio. Unfortunately, you would have to do this separately for each video you opened and the AV controls are not available for movies that are embedded into a web page. I have also reported this as a bug to Apple and included this info. Perhaps it will help them solve the problem. I sure hope so! This really needs to get fixed

Soundtrack Pro corrupting audio files during editing

Using S'trackPro 1.1 on both G5s and Mac Pros, I've experienced a recurring issue when editing long audio files (16bit 48Khz aiffs of 60-120 min durations).
Import files directly in Audio File edit mode, usually apply a limiter and/or normalize and save with new file name. I often find as I move around the waveform to preview results, the playback stops responding accurately, playing the wrong part of the file randomly.
Once saved, the file seems to have random "splurts" of audio appear in inappropriate places throughout. For example, a 2 sec "splurt" from the middle of a 120 min file may appear 10 minutes before the end, seemingly at random.
It's odd that I've experienced this on numerous machines, all with quite different specs.
Any suggestions appreciated.
3 x G5 Dual 2Ghx 2.5Gb RAM, Mac Pro Quad 2.66 5Gb RAM Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I actually use the 'save as' function that consolidates all the audio clips and move them onto a separate drive. I'm doing a lot of large projects that have more clips than are actually used. Consolidation means I can move and work on another machine. And in the end it's easier to archive this single directory of files. Works for me, especially because sometimes the audio sources are scattered in too many places on my system.

"8-bit" Corrupted Audio Files On Reload?

A day after a recording session with my band the other night, I re-opened the song and recieved an error message "What kind of file is this?" and then another... something about the file being "8-bit" and unusable. This is the bass track from a very good session with my band and I'd like to try and recover it. Does anyone know how this happened, how to recover the file, and how to prevent it from happening in the future? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
More info: When opening the file in SoundHack, it says that it is a "Headerless" file. Setting the header to 24 bit linear and saving a copy results in an extremely distorted and unusable file, but you can kind of hear the recording in the background... sped up.

If you search for "8 bit" in this forum, you will find at least half a dozen threads about this already.

Can I recover this corrupted audio file (m4a)?

There is a mystery with one of the voice memos i recorded in a tutorial on my iphone. It recorded fine, i could see it was recording minute by minute but then i wasn't able listen it again on the phone. Then when I plugged it into USB and downloaded it, it wouldn't open. Though, it shows as 45 mb file.
Is there any hope in recovering it? I put the file online here.. Please let me know if you are not able get the file from there or any other place I get upload it too.
https://www.yousendit.com/download/d...OC9TRTVFQlE9PQ

I even had a go working out 'afconvert' in Terminal - http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#qa/qa1534/_index.html
Sorry deliavolmar

Corrupted audio

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