Members Jeff Leites Posted July 9, 2016 Members Share Posted July 9, 2016 I probably don't have enough information to get the help I need, but here it goes... A while back, my friends and I did some recording at Robby Kreiger's Horse Latitudes studio. It was a prize at a charity auction. We got a CD, but I'd like to remix it, and put in some corrections to my flubs. I've got what I assume is all the files from the session. One of the folders is call "Audio" and it looks like it has wav files of all the recordings. One problem is that the names of the files specify the instrument, but not the tunes they are related to... That's a lot of tracks for all the drum mics. The bigger problem is that I can't open most of the wav files. The error messages suggest that they are an unsupported format. Audacity tells me to try to import them in the raw format. When I do that, there are all kinds of options that I don't understand. Any suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted July 9, 2016 Members Share Posted July 9, 2016 They are locked to the original software? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted July 9, 2016 CMS Author Share Posted July 9, 2016 I've got what I assume is all the files from the session. One of the folders is call "Audio" and it looks like it has wav files of all the recordings. One problem is that the names of the files specify the instrument' date=' but not the tunes they are related to... That's a lot of tracks for all the drum mics.[/quote'] Welcome to the world of poorly documented sessions. After 20 years of recording with computers, people are still doing that. Then you open all the drum tracks, solo them, and you can't tell which one is the snare. It's not like when we used to write information about the session on the tape box and stick a piece of paper with all the track info inside. And it was easier when you only had eight tracks, too. There's really not much you can do other than make some educated guesses, and figure that you really don't need all of those tracks anyway. The bigger problem is that I can't open most of the wav files. The error messages suggest that they are an unsupported format. Audacity tells me to try to import them in the raw format. When I do that, there are all kinds of options that I don't understand. Any suggestions? Do you know, or have a way to find out what program was used to record the project? Got any other programs besides Audacity? And are you using the newest version of Audacity? Or got any friends who have other programs? Some programs add metadata that other programs don't understand. If it was recorded with Audacity, you may be looking at Audacity's file format. It saves WAV files, but they're very short, and it puts them together when it's playing. In order to get the whole track as a single file, you need to open the recording "project" file (not just the WAV file) in Audacity, and then export the track as a WAV file. So it may be that, in Audacity, you aren't opening the right file. I don't remember what the extension on the file name is for that session, but somebody will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted July 9, 2016 Members Share Posted July 9, 2016 What software was used to record them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff Leites Posted July 9, 2016 Author Members Share Posted July 9, 2016 I don't know what the recording software was, but I'll try to find out. Here's a screen capture of the error messages I get when I try to open one of the files with various apps: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted July 9, 2016 Members Share Posted July 9, 2016 In the OP you say "one of the folders…" contains the wav files. What other files/folders do you have? There is a good chance that your recording was produced using ProTools. If you know somebody who has a recent version of ProTools then perhaps you could use that to help organize your wav files into something you can make some sense of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted July 9, 2016 Members Share Posted July 9, 2016 Check out the sample rate and bit resolution of the WAV files that won't open, then check the sample rate and resolution of the WAV files that do open, and see if there's a difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff Leites Posted July 9, 2016 Author Members Share Posted July 9, 2016 QUIT LOOKING! My buddy Doug Forbes (electronics guru, musician, and designer of the Forbes theremin) told me what I was doing wrong. My Windows Explorer was not showing the size column for .wav files. When I fixed that, I could see that the wav files at top of the folder were all 4k. Scrolling down showed wav files of various sizes. Those are the ones with the actual sound tracks. He also suggested that I could use the file sizes to find which files went together for a particular song. Thanks everyone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted July 10, 2016 CMS Author Share Posted July 10, 2016 QUIT LOOKING! My buddy Doug Forbes (electronics guru' date=' musician, and designer of the Forbes theremin) told me what I was doing wrong. My Windows Explorer was not showing the size column for .wav files. When I fixed that, I could see that the wav files at top of the folder were all 4k. Scrolling down showed wav files of various sizes. [/quote'] That's what Audacity's files look like - a bunch of short files with the WAV extension. So when you open the right files, they work, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff Leites Posted July 10, 2016 Author Members Share Posted July 10, 2016 So when you open the right files, they work, right? Right. It's all good now... and when I sort them by file size, it's easy to drag all the tracks that go together into Audacity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted July 10, 2016 CMS Author Share Posted July 10, 2016 Right. It's all good now... and when I sort them by file size, it's easy to drag all the tracks that go together into Audacity. The "._" before the track name and "_nn" tacked on to the end is also a clue. Sorting the files alphabetically should also group all the junk together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted July 10, 2016 Members Share Posted July 10, 2016 The ._ before the track name means it was created on a Mac. I believe that's a metadata file, or it's the icon or whatever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted July 11, 2016 Share Posted July 11, 2016 Right. It's all good now... and when I sort them by file size, it's easy to drag all the tracks that go together into Audacity. That will only work if all the tracks for the session were consolidated so they're continuous from start to finish and all of the same length, without any punch-ins or multiple WAV files per track. Not all sessions are consolidated before backups are run... although if you're planning on sharing the session files with someone who uses a different DAW program, they generally should be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Danhedonia Posted July 11, 2016 Members Share Posted July 11, 2016 I am not anywhere near as smart or experienced as the other posters here, but would add this: whenever I need to sort out files, one thing that can really help is the timestamp. One would assume that the timestamp for the ind. drum tracks could at least be sorted out by song by looking at the original timestamp. No? BTW, don't mean to sound silly, but hoping you have already backed everything up to a separate device. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted July 11, 2016 Share Posted July 11, 2016 whenever I need to sort out files' date=' one thing that can really help is the timestamp. One would assume that the timestamp for the ind. drum tracks could at least be sorted out by song by looking at the original timestamp. No?[/quote'] Excellent point. While the timestamp won't help determine all of the files that go together in all cases (after all, overdubs are often done later in the day or even on a different date), they can certainly narrow down which drum tracks should go together, as well as any other rhythm section / basic tracks that were waxed concurrently with them. BTW, don't mean to sound silly, but hoping you have already backed everything up to a separate device. Backup reminders are never silly, and IMHO, we can never remind each other often enough when it comes to backups. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted July 11, 2016 Share Posted July 11, 2016 Having been on the receiving end of some questionably saved session files on numerous occasions, I am really temped to drop a rant here... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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