Lost song? huh????

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SOUND DIAGNOSIS

SOUND DIAGNOSIS

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Why is it when I mix down a song to 2 stereo tracks from 6 original tracks at the very common 44k/16bit, and export this song to a wavefile, instead of like 42 megs for a 4 minute song I see like 84 megs when I look at the file in my "C" drive under properties??? In the Cool Edit file information box, it says 42M. In the sound recorder it says 42M when I check the properties tab. :(Am I missing something simple here?) Methinks there might be a copy of the same song somewhere that has the same name or is combined. But....like....where is it, if it exists at all??. Why am I getting double the amount of valuable hard disk space taken from me? Shit....I am down to 2 gigs in an 8.6 gig system.! Thanks in advance for some sort of an explanation. ------ROB
 
Have you used the Windows file search feature to look for a duplicate? If you look in your directory, did you use the refresh option ( in the menu or by pressing F5 )? Sometimes Windows displays wrong file sizes until you refresh as mentioned.
 
Hey there Eisenbart. Thanks for the quick response and suggestions! ô¿ô I have searched the files and there is only one copy of the wavefile. There is a wrk. and a bun shortcut in there too for the same song..........HOWEVER.....I deleted the Bun file due to inability to get it to open. (don't really care about that problem now) :) I F5'D the files as well, with no change in size. The fact that it is DOUBLE the size should mean something for sure.....but unfortunately not to me. Any other possible reasons? Thanks ----ROB

Eisenbart said:
Have you used the Windows file search feature to look for a duplicate? If you look in your directory, did you use the refresh option ( in the menu or by pressing F5 )? Sometimes Windows displays wrong file sizes until you refresh as mentioned.
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Here's a follow up: I went into cool edit to increase the volume of that song as to sort of master it into a 2 song demo CD that I am producing. After I made that adjustment, looking in the file folders list, the NEW amplified wave had 42 megs on it!. And the other file was still there with 84 megs. Also the file names will present differently like this~~> HERO.WAV* or HERO.WAV (2). There must be a simple explanation regarding my silly file managment skills or something. Ugh.! :confused:
 
This sounds somewhat confusing ;) Well, just to make sure I am getting it right: You got two WAV files which you exported from Sonar, which represent the left and right stereo channel of the song?

It would be interesting to know the exact format of the files. For a regular WAV file, there are 3 parameters of interest:

1. The sample rate, e.g. 44100 hz or 22050 hz
2. The bits per sample, usually 8 or 16
3. The number of channels, 1 = mono, 2 = stereo

In order to get the size in bytes of the raw audio data ( i.e. without any file header ) you use the following formula:

Sample Rate * ( Bits per Sample / 8 ) * Number of channels * seconds

So for a 44100 hz file at 16 bit stereo which takes 4 minutes, you get

44100 * 2 * 2 * 240 = 42.336.000 bytes = 40 MB

Usually it´s a little more because you got the file header as well.

Using this formula, you should be able to determine the "correct" size of your WAV file - if you get different values, you either got wrong format information or your software is lying to you ;)
 
Well, in some case, software might display wrong information due to a bug - it´s not often, though. In case you got the suspicion, compare it with the information you get from another program.
 
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