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Is there any tool that helps with fixing a .wav file header other than Audacity?

The file is playing pure noise on audacity and doesn't open in other applications at all.

I believe the header is corrupted and not sure which value to use for "offset".

Here is a sample file: .wav corrupted file download 4 mgb

Here is another file just to confirm:

Another corrupted .wav file 35 mgb

elGreato
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1 Answers1

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To get a grip on an unknown binary file its always good advice to pop it open using a hex editor ... https://www.wxhexeditor.org/

The file looks to be a binary dump of some web page ... notice the right column showing HTML

or issue this terminal command to render each byte in boolean and its ASCII counterpart

xxd -b name_of_given_binary_file 

00000000: 00111100 00100001 01000100 01001111 01000011 01010100  <!DOCT
00000006: 01011001 01010000 01000101 00100000 01101000 01110100  YPE ht
0000000c: 01101101 01101100 00111110 00001010 00111100 00100001  ml>.<!
00000012: 00101101 00101101 01011011 01101001 01100110 00100000  --[if 
00000018: 01101100 01110100 01100101 00100000 01001001 01000101  lte IE
0000001e: 00100000 00111000 01011101 00111110 00111100 01101000   8]><h
00000024: 01110100 01101101 01101100 00100000 01100011 01101100  tml cl
0000002a: 01100001 01110011 01110011 00111101 00100010 01101110  ass="n
00000030: 01100111 00101101 01100011 01110011 01110000 00100000  g-csp 


od -a name_of_given_binary_file   # octal dump is handy here too

0000000   <   !   D   O   C   T   Y   P   E  sp   h   t   m   l   >  nl
0000020   <   !   -   -   [   i   f  sp   l   t   e  sp   I   E  sp   8
0000040   ]   >   <   h   t   m   l  sp   c   l   a   s   s   =   "   n
0000060   g   -   c   s   p  sp   i   e  sp   i   e   8  sp   l   t   e
Scott Stensland
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  • Good answer. If I were to make a wild guess, you have downloaded the wave from internet not as wave, but wrapped in html. Happens when you simply "click" instead of right click (context menu) and "save as". – Lukasz Tracewski May 27 '18 at 13:38
  • @LukaszTracewski so right you are ... now that I've reached the download I see Audacity sheds no light ... even with a corrupted header or no header at all and Import -> Raw Data then running through various combinations nothing helps give a recognizable signal ... I'd say its less of an issue of a corrupt header than a corrupt payload ... ffprobe gives a : 000101_0369.wav: Invalid data found when processing input ... aplay says : Playing raw data '000101_0369.wav' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono ... then it sounds like a machine synthesized SDR data transmission – Scott Stensland May 27 '18 at 14:32
  • thanks guys for taking interest. Actually this file is from a recorder a friend has, 70% of the records are corrupted in the same way, while 30% still work. What happens is that the recorder suddenly showed a message asking if it should "correct" the files, and we pressed yes, and then the files were corrupted. it is a 100% not an html file ( although I see the result you got, so I am also confused) – elGreato May 27 '18 at 18:47
  • my mistake I right click downloaded it initially later did the click then download my fault ... however once I examined the wav file no luck – Scott Stensland May 27 '18 at 22:32