Fix a Corrupt Wav Audio File in Audacity - Data Recovery Using VLC 

If anyone is trying to recover audio from a TASCAM DR10-L, try start bit of 2! Worked for me, and saved my audio! Thanks for the video!

DUDE!!! I was following along the entire time and it still wasn't working, so I just threw in a random number for the Offset and BOOM, it worked. You are my savior of the day, sir! Thank you!

This video rescued my last recording. Thanks!

So good! Appreciate you so much for this video

Dear sir, I record my live DJ sets to eventually share on RU-vid. This evening, I played a set which was a total improvisation and then my recording software crashed and I was left with a non-responsive giant .wav file. It has happened to me before and I simply deleted the file and moved on. This time, I decided to do some research and came across your video which I followed to the letter and voilà! I recovered my mix! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!! It goes without saying that I will give you credit in the video! Much respect from Montréal!

I got a corrupt audio file after dropping my Zoom H1 and it ejected the card. This guide was super helpful, but I never got it working in Audacity. However, since VLC was playing the file just fine, I managed to use File > Convert / Stream to export a new version of the file, which worked! VLC is amazing.

Fantastic, and SOO easy to follow. Thought I'd lost a whole concert recording, but with your help, there it was. I could see it on my computer, but it would not play and listed 'no data', such a relief to know that these things can be recovered. It's never happened before and I hope it won't happen again, but if it does, I'm prepared!

This video worked PERFECTLY. It took about 6 tries with various settings but I got it. On a MAC, the VLC info is not in the same place in the video, but I found it. Saved me :47 minutes worth of audio. The recorder was unplugged and the wav file was not closed. SO thankful for this video.

if i see you somewhere on the road, I will literally touch your feet in front of everyone. That file is extremely important to me . It worked !! and I am very thankful to you!

Thank you so much for posting this video. I use Audacity every week to convert a WAV file to an MP3 and then upload it to our website. I didn't know how to use the 'Import RAW Data' option (I have never had to use it) This week I was given a file, which unknown to anyone, was corrupt. After watching your video a couple of times and experimenting with the settings, I managed to retrieve the file and carry out my usual editing. Great work! The file that was corrupted came from our Allen & Heath QU24 Digital Soundesk and the record codec is:- Audio PCM S24 LE (s24l) Stereo 48000 Hz 32 bit I had to set the 'Start Offset' to 200 as no other settings worked (apart from static and distortion) and I could not see or hear any difference in the recording.

This is why I ALWAYS record in WAV. I actually knew about this trick before, but I'm glad this video exists.

This is an awesome fix. It salvaged my 1 hour interview file. Thank you. I had recorded on my h4n and couldn't even get it off the SD card, I had to run Disk Utility on my Mac to repair it, just to enable myself to copy it onto my iMac. Then it wouldn't play, except in VLC, and this is when I stumbled onto this tutorial and it healed the corrupt file. So thank you so much.

This has just saved me. I had a bunch of interviews recorded from a kids residential which were mostly corrupted. I've managed to save them. You rock. Now I can make the audio documentary that I promised them. Phew!

Very nifty! I had exhausted all my immediate ideas on how to get my corrupted wav file to read and play. It was a breeze to use the "import raw data" function and now my 3-hour long wav file is ready for editing! I'm loving Audacity more and more every time I use it.

This was so great, thanks for the tip! I used 512bytes as the offset - 100 didn't work. My audio recorder (Tascam DR-10L) stopped recording after about an hour - it was still on but the timecode wasn't advancing anymore. The battery was low to start with so maybe it tried to save and shutdown near the end of the battery. Not sure what happened, but I ended up with a 500MB+ file that wouldn't open normally. VLC played it fine, and importing it as raw worked well. Thanks again!

Was recording something in Ableton and I lost power (Was an hour long file too! :/ ) My file wasn't playable in VLC, although I still managed to recover it by experimenting with the raw data import settings in Audacity! This video is an absolute lifesaver!!

thank you sooooo much, I used VLC to convert a "lost" file so i could work with it, this would not of been possible without your video

Thank you Sonovert! What a great solution... I had a corrupt file (track) from a multi-track ProTools session recorded by a soundman at a local nightclub. At first I thought it was a bad memory stick, but it ended up being the actual file. For anyone interested, it took probably a half hour of changing the import settings, but it finally worked. (It helps to have your favorite beverage within arm's reach and a notepad to keep track of what you've tried...!) Checking a known good file/track from the same session in VLC Media Player was a great idea as well. Nice work!

Wow, opened up a pro tools session that was recorded two months ago. the mix was due in two days and 25 minute clip would not open in Pro Tools / Quick time / VLC / Ffmpeg. Free audacity coming to the rescue!!!! cheers for this vid!!!

For the start offset, you need to figure out how many bytes are used for the WAV file header (with the rest being data). It's often 44 byte headers in a standard WAV, but it can vary. In your situation, stereo 24-bit PCM uses 6 bytes (48 bits) per frame. So we know the header size is not a multiple of 6, or else the data portion wouldn't have been jumbled up. If an offset of 100 worked, even an offset of 4 would have worked. We know your header is not 44 bytes, but could be 46, 52, 58, 64, ... 94, 100, ... etc. because then the data chunks show up aligned.

Awesome. I had an 90 min recording of a concert that was irrecoverable up until this point. The thing that helped me was I was able to use quicktime to see the linear PCM and the Endian encoding. In my case I had to switch to match the following with my Tascam recorder: Encoding: Signed 16 bit Byte Order: Little Endian Channels: Stereo Start Offset: 0% Amount to import 100% (though I did only import 5% at a time till I got it right) Sample Rate: 48000k (my recorder is set to this sample rate on capture) Super grateful. Thank you!

Thanks so much! Just started editing a doc shot in some remote areas in Asia and found that my key interview audio file was corrupt. you just saved my work!

The recording of our church service would not open on the Edirol R-09 I use every week. Your instructions worked perfectly! The file is restored and I can edit as normal. Thanks!

You saved me with this video. From the bottom of my heart, I pray you live long, and I wish you the best of everything. Thank you.

Thank you. This saved me for sure. I just used Audacity as you mentioned, and after a few tries, I got the right settings. My offset was 100. Thanks again!

THANK YOU! This video saved an AMAZING podcast from pure corruption.

THANK YOU!! A file was corrupt and it was the only copy. Least to say, my business and reputation depended on saving this file to transcribe the contents. THIS WORKED. I appreciate you taking the time to make this tutorial!

This worked like a charm. Was able to get a clients old, corrupted, marketing files back. THANKS!

Thanks a Lot. I repaired my .Wav file in the technique as you explained, the file in which I stuck with and depressed. Thanks a lot for you and Audacity.

May you find all the happiness you desire! Saved me a lot of re-recording.

11 years later still saves lives.

Don't know if this has been said already, couldn't find it in the comments. I am pretty Sure "PCM S24 LE" means Codec: PCM Signed 24 bits and LE stands for Little Endian. Start offset means it skips the first few Bytes before beginning to import. Should be set to 0 if you want everything to be there I guess. Edit: Oh and a big thanks for the hint to VLC. That's a huge timesaver if a recording stops when a game just crashes again

I love you because now I can use a 2h long audio instead of deleting it.

Just saved my life. Just did a wedding and had two audio source. Got home, only one had audio and it was corrupt :( dont know how that happened. Tried this method and now I am good.

Thank you so much. I got a corrupt audio from be infected with ransomware and it has saved my audio files. Thank you

This worked! Just make sure your codec details are correct. Thank you sir for making this tut.

Woo! this worked a treat with a broken Ableton wav! I'd been working with that all day. Thanks Sonovert :)

Thank you very much. Worked like a charm for me. It saved me a 2 hours recording of an interview with a very interesting person. BTW. Kodek for me is PCM S16 LE. I think LE stands for Little Endian here.

OH MY GOSH YOU ARE A LIFESAVER!!!! THANK YOU!!! GUYS, HIS METHOD REALLY WORKS! THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN!!

Thx mate! Saved part of my exam work. Small values didn't work but once i used 20000 there it was. Awesome!

What happens if VLC does not display any information in the codec tab? Is there another way to get the information required for audacity to read the file?

Thank you so much. You saved my music life. Had a recording from a gig and one of the files was corrupted but your method on audacity fixed it :)

This worked perfectly. I used an offset of 10 after getting the audio properties using VLC. Thank you!

brooo thank youu. Messing around with "offset" setting it to 1 I believe, is what worked for me

Thanks for posting this, thanks to you I've just salvaged a whole nights recording

Thanks, worked like a charm. Was a recording of a critical meeting and no-one took notes. Thought it was lost for ever.

Greatness... boss was pissed because he had a corrupt voicemail file. Now he thinks I'm "magic" lol

Great it works...:) thank you very much, i had a 2 GB Wav file couldn't open it from any player... Thank you, you saved my recording... greatings from Switzerland...

You Sir, are a legend and an absolute life saver! This totally works but I needed to play around with the offset for the best results. Any number could have done it but some numbers do it better than others so I would recommend playing around with it before exporting! Thank you so much!

DUDE I FUCKING LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

oh my god, thank you so much! I needed to recover a corrupted audio file for RU-vid and I could do it! Thank you!

Thank you! This helped me recover some very important audio for a video project. Your tutorial is just what I needed.

Very easy to follow tutorial and, best of all, it worked! Thank you so much for taking the time to make and post this.

Thanks!! This fixed several DJ mixes I had recorded on USB. PCM signed 16-bit little-endian worked for me after VLC told me the codec was mp4a with an extremely low bitrate.

Thanks for the hint! Maybe helpful for others: The offset can be usually fixed with the offset value of 1 or 2 bytes... mine worked with 2 bytes. I used mediainfo program instead of vlc.. there you'll get also the endianness of the file.

Thank you so much! I had a ZOOM H4N audio recording where the batteries went dead and didn't close the file. I used this to recover the main audio recording from a wedding I was shooting video on.

Thank you - after two days of searching, this solved my problem. Very grateful!

I HAVE A VIDEO ITS LAST PARTS AUDIO IS DAMAGED HOW CAN I RECOVER IT

thanks dude, helped me recover an important wav file. I used Adobe Audition, which was also working. Just need to import the corrupt file with the correct sample rate and voila, could recover it (after first had to recover it from a deleted fat32 partition)..

Worked for me too. Saved a whole nights worth of live recording that was to be used to make a DVD of the gig. Had to 1/2 my rate to 24000HZ to get it correctly timescaled though.

ITS WORKING! RECOVERED BACK!! :) I had asked many experts to recover my corrupted file - But none of them were able to get to a solution! I'm highly thankful to Sonovert for sharing this video!

It worked as per the video, but also I found that having loaded and played the corrupt WAV file in VLC I was able to Convert/Save to an MP3 file directly without using Audacity. Possibly just lucky with the specific corruption I had.

Great help I got here, saved a very long audio file that I thought was lost since my recording software crashed :D

Thanks for your straight forward and simple tutorial how to recover br0k3n wav data. Thanks to your video I was able to recover data from a power failure on my Allen&Heath ICE-16 recorder.

Nine years later...thank you!!!

hey, just had similar problem, but your approach didn't work. what in the end helped was using VLC to convert (corrupted WAV) audio file to FLAC and then audacity was able to open it. seems VLC is sort of lifesaver :)

this video helped me rescue my corrupted .wav file! Thank You!

You, sir, are a genius and I really appreciate your work

You are a genius!!! Thanks a lot, I had a corrupted file with very precious content for me and I was able to fix it thanks to your advice. GBY

Thanks for the tutorial! It kind of worked for me, but I'm still having problems. Unlike your file, mine would not play back on anything, even vlc, although I was able to use vlc to get the codec info. When I imported it into audacity, it played, but in a super-fast, chipmunk-syle manner. Any idea for how to fix this?

I followed your tutorial and it worked. Thanks!

Excellent how-to! Worked a treat. Thanks for saving my project.

you sir a gentleman and a scholar, I bloody love you! Thankyou so much!

@LouisKatzComedy, I would try looking at your sample rates. If you're not familiar with sample rates, it's the number of audio samples taken per second, just like the number if frames per second in video. If your audio was recorded at 44,100 sample rate for example, and you try to recover it as a 48,000 sample rate, it will play back faster than what it was meant to. Hope that helps.

VLC now auto detects corruption and did not offer import raw parameters. worked perfectly

Update 2024: this didn't work for me, but I used the VLC command File>Convert/Stream, dropped the file in to the window which opens, and in the "Choose Profile" menu chose "Custom" at the bottom, then hit "Customize", and went to the "Audio Codec" tab and chose "Keep original audio" and hit save and it produced a new file in full quality at 96khz/24 bit

Thanks a lot :) Worked very well, and even with offset set to 0 - all other values you mentioned gave a static noise.

This worked great. I was able to recover a file on my Edirol 09 when the battery died mid-program.

This worked perfect for my audio file.. without even sampling with offset

Yeah thanks for this. Saved me some headache and reshooting.

Thanks a ton. Worked great on a file that was corrupted some how. Thanks!

Great info.... thanks. Good presentation style too... Bravo !!!

Worked for me... Saved me CASH! I almost lost my main audio for a Funeral Service!

Worked for a recording in Traktor that crashed mid set, thanks

fantastic, worked for me, had to use 500 bytes for the start offset

You can actually skip the Audacity part altogether and simply save it through VLC.

Basically a copy paste of every other comment but, Thank the lord for this video!

Thank you so much! This was such a headache, such a simple fix!

how do I open old audacity files that were recorded on an older version? I am using version 2.0.2 and I wanted to import project files from 1.2.6 but it won't work. Also, those older project files didn't open once I plugged them into the older 1.2.6 version (after re-downloading it)

I have 2 x 64GB corrupted cards of wav files recorded at 96khz / 24 bit - tried this but vlc wouldnt read it. shame, not sure what to do....

No matter what number I use I just get that ear piercing static :( is there a specific set of numbers that could possibly work for the offset?

Maan, Thank you for this video! Saved my project !

Really very helpful!! It worked perfectly. Awesome!! Thanks

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! You are a life saver. I can't thank you enough.

Hi there, any tips on how to recover codec info? I'm trying to save an interview from a water damaged usb drive, and couldn't find a way to get the codec info (it's just always blank)... I've been playing around just a bit and audacity actually managed to save some raw data but the audio is just static and some incomprehensible sounds like sped up mickey-mouse mumble ?? Anyway it gives me hope that there is still something to recover and I would appreciate any help a lot!

Thanks buddy, it was such a mind relief. Thinking about doing ADR instead kills you

Thank you for posting this video. It was a lifesaver!

Thanks for the help bro

So glad this worked, nice video man!

Sorry if this a dumb question, but does the "Start off-set" have to be a 100?...