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07-22-2014, 10:28 AM
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#1
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Nov 2013
Posts: 21
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Mysterious wav file corruption?
I have been searching for this as a Reaper bug, Windows bug, and just in general for a few days now. Can't find anything that accurately describes what I am seeing. Maybe I am missing the correct Google search terms. Hopefully someone can help.
I am recording on a Zoom R16 with a 32GB SD card. I copy and paste the 24bit wav files from the card onto my internal hard drive. I then edit/mix/master/fool around in Reaper. I chop and play and render to mp3 and save the project. My machine is Windows 7 64bit i7 processor.
I did a project about 6 months ago. I backed it all up (source files and all) to two other HDs. Today I opened the project on original machine and notice that two of the imported wav files have about half a second of intense static that was definitely not there the last time I opened the project. I attached a screenshot of the wav file.
When I play the raw wav file in Media Player, the crazy static burst is there!!! So either I did something (???) or Reaper corrupted my source file!? This same thing has happened to me with other files during the initial mix but I chalked it up on the SD card transfer. That can't be the case here because I have the rendered file from 6 months ago and there is no static bursts. It had to have happen from the time I last opened Reaper until now.
Anyone know what is going on here? At least a general idea so I can do a search. A search for corrupt audio files just sends me to header information. And static burst is apparently not specific enough to produce useful results. I would really like to prevent this from happening in the future in case I don't backup the original wav files.
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07-22-2014, 10:33 AM
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#2
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Nov 2013
Posts: 21
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I forgot to mention that all of the source wav files have the same time signature from 9-18-2013. Created, modified and accessed. So that is more than 6 months.
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07-24-2014, 05:00 AM
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#3
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Nov 2013
Posts: 21
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Well if no one has seen this, then it must be me. I just wish I knew what caused it so I can prevent it from happening.
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07-24-2014, 08:01 AM
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#4
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Administrator
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: NYC
Posts: 15,742
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REAPER will really never modify .wav files -- you could overwrite them, but it should never change random bits of the .wav. If the file changed (adding static in part), it would either be a disk issue or some other software corrupted the file. Did you check the backups to see what they have? If the modified time is not updated, it would be slightly more likely that the disk corrupted it, but it's also possible that some software that modified the file also preserved the timestamp.
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07-24-2014, 10:57 AM
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#5
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Sep 2010
Posts: 12,632
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That looks like file corruption (ie. a missing few bits or bytes of data).
You said that all your backups have the same exact corruption? (If I read that right.) It's likely that you (unfortunately) made backups after the file corruption happened in the first place in that case.
If this is corruption from a disk error (resulting in a few bits being misread in the bad spot), the creation and modification dates should not have been affected.
That means any scheduled backup cloning would see the file in question as not having changed since the last backup and would therefor not overwrite it. (Assuming you make 1:1 backup clones of all your disk volumes.)
That means you might still have an error free backup if it was backed up before the (alleged) disk corruption. So check your backup drive/volume for the drive in question just in case!
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07-24-2014, 12:04 PM
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#6
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: Northeast Michigan
Posts: 3,460
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Could it be a plugin that is still in "trial" mode? Some plugs create static every so often when still in trial mode... My T-Racks does this even though it is registered... I don't use it anymore...
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07-24-2014, 02:21 PM
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#7
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 15
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I ran into the very same problem about a year ago. I did some drum recordings and everything seemed to be ok, but the next day I had some randomly spread errors across several tracks. See attached screenshot.
To see those errors in the wave forms, you have to zoom in very close.
This happened to a few songs during the recordings, I had to fix those parts manually by replacing them from other parts.
Since then the problem didn't show up again, but for no comprehensible reasons.
So this isn't a solution, I just can acknowledge the problem.
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07-24-2014, 04:02 PM
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#8
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Sep 2010
Posts: 12,632
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I've had files get corrupt in the past from something happening while a DAW had the file open. Cough Digital Cough Performer Cough cough...
Everything from a blip of full scale noise to dropping a byte (so for the rest of the file from that point the sample information is assembled incorrectly and you get heavy distortion and artifacts).
Not sure what the exact explanation ever was as to the exact nuts and bolts of what happened. Just reporting that I've seen things go wrong with other buggy apps when they had files open.
I've also seen hard drives develop bad parts and lose little bits of data.
One more reason to make sure your backups are in order.
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08-05-2014, 09:56 AM
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#9
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Nov 2013
Posts: 21
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Thanks Everyone. I think I agree that the problem is file corruption. I am trying to pinpoint it to my file usage behavior. My Zoom uses an SD. I copy the wavs from the SD to my computer. But then I also mix on other computers so I use a USB sometimes to move and copy wavs around. To be honest there are a lot of copies of most of my raw wavs that aren't actually "backups", just copies. I am sure I can find un-corrupted instances if I look. I am going to buy a new SD (mine is getting old anyway, and they are cheap). I need to keep an immediate backup of the wavs first thing. Then I should be fine. I am getting careless. I'll streamline my file usage so I have more control of backups.
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08-05-2014, 10:27 AM
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#10
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Kalispell
Posts: 14,759
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I ran into something like this several years ago and I seem to remember, if I simply took the bad part out and pulled the ends together they matched up. Evidently something had inserted this noise which was very easy to see and easy to cut out.
This is probably not your case but check it out.
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