Unwinding a Wav

[utsman]

Hi Guys,
When I make a track in cubase and export it as a Wav file it gets saved as a mixman file down the bottom of the screen. Can I unwind/reverse this file back to the original recorded audio tracks? I have lost a lot of stuff due to me being a tool. The wav files are still alive. Esentially i have the cake but have lost the ingredients. Am I dreaming?

[Bass Master "K"]

If your asking if you can take a wave file that was an exported mixdown from cubase, and reverse it back into cubase audio tracks, I'm sad to report the answer is no. Your wave file is a LR stereo track mixdown, there is no hidden info in it about what the individual tracks were like when it was in cubase being recorded.

As a fellow "tool" who has totally f-ed up some stuff trying to clear out HD space, I can say that these are sad lessons, but lessons nonetheless. I learned that even if I think I will never want to work on a tune again, it's worth the 2-10 cents per CDR to just burn the dang cubase tracks to disk for backup.

Sorry I don't have better news.

[utsman]

Thanks Bass Master K,

I guess I have to be happy with what I have. It's not the guitars and vocals I will miss, I can easily redo them, but the track I sequenced in Fruity Loops with the drums and back up effects, I will miss this a lot. I doubt I can ever reproduce that. Yes I lost the FL file and the wav of that. What a Loser.

Thanks for the crap news anyway.

[Bass Master "K"]

Wish I had better news. For me the audio I messed up was just rough cuts of tunes I was going to redo anyways, but there were some effects I could have reused and I mistakenly cleared out stuff I didn't mean to leaving me with only the final mixdowns.

On the plus side, you only do it once. I just happened to do it to about 10 songs all at once.

[xstatic]

How did you "lose" it. You might be very surprised at how much data can be recovered by the right people

The easiest way I have found to lose tracks is if someone saves 2 songs in the same folder. Then, if you open one of the two and go into your audio pool and remove unused media and erase the trash bin......

Voila, it also puts the tracks from your other song in the trash, which you just emptied. Hopefully you catch it before you empty your windows recycle bin. I have found it very useful to save each song to a new folder (only using the tracks that were used, not copying old takes) when I completely finish a project. Then, slap it on a DVD-RW (since it could take 2 CD's to hold your song), and make a copy to another removable hard drive. Then, and only then do I attempt to clean my files off of my working drive:P

[utsman]

What happened is painfull,

I use fruity to sequence drums and trippy effects for my Pink Floyd type music. Fruity was giving me trouble so I uninstalled the bitch forgetting that "Loops" the folder where it saves everything including the exported wavs is in the program folders. So the sequenced tracks are all gone. Then I did what xstatic said and had more than 1 song saved under the same name, backed up the wrong one and cleared the folder and trash. There was just too much shit in that folder. Which leads to a new thread I am about to post. The audios I wanted to do again anyway. They are probably floating around somewhere on the hard drive, but the sequence is uninstalled. Apparently uninstalling is a good way to really lose shit. Anyway started sequencing again and will make it better this time anyway.

The Tool

[xstatic]

If you didn't manually delete the Fruity Loops stuff, then they should still be there. Typically, when a program uninstalls and reinstalls, it ONLY removes files that were installed. Not files created after the install. If you manually deleted them, thats another story. Also, if you have not yet emptied your windows recycle bin, then everything is still there. I believe emptying Cubases trash can only removesd it from Cubases grasp and places it in the windows recycle bin.

[utsman]

So you think they still live. The folder loops is there again after reinstallation but only the demo stuff is there. My precious bits are gone. I can't find them in the trash or in anywhere on a search. Maybe I need to look closer. I am a goose with computers. Lucky I can operate cubase-- sort of.
ANY ideas.