Need to recover lost project files

I finished a long session today. I went to do a rough mix for the artist so they had something to take home. Something got deleted in the file Sonar file, because it no longer contains hardly any of the tracks. (I did not have Sonar set to "recover last x versions).

I tried loading the Project wav files into a new project, but I got a lot of gibberish. Lots of tracks/takes and nothing synced up.

2 reasons for hope:
1. I do have the Audio Folder with a lot of wav files.
2. I also have a folder containing WOV and WTR files.

I think someone who really knows the ins/outs of Sonar could reconstruct the project. Can you help? I seriously think it could be recovered if someone knows how Sonar works internally.

Thanks!

-Tim

Have you tried un-deleting the original?
http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download

John

tim@homestudio


1. Audio Folder with a lot of wav files.

If these are intact, you can rebuild it.
They will be the original recorded audio tracks. The filenames are somewhat cryptic, so it may take a bit of sorting to get everything in the right place.
Don't sweat the WOV files. These are the graphic waveform images, and they will regenerate.
I'm not sure what the WTR files are.

Can you give me advice (steps) as to how to rebuild it?
My first attempt was to open a new project and import the files from the Audio folder. That just gave me a whole bunch of wav files.

(If I had exported each track as a wav file, I could them. I have done that before.  (That is how I share tracks with other studios using other software. Then the tracks load and sync. )

I need advice on the steps to rebuild the project file.
I think the Audio folder contains the wav data.
But I also think Sonar stores the "information" as to what to do with those wav files somewhere else. I think that is how it operates efficiently and uses less data space.
I think the rebuild has to be simple, if someone knows the steps.
Do I open a new project?
Do I open the old project that has the tracks that looked wiped? If so, how do I recover the data?

Thanks for any ideas you may have.

Thanks for the ideas.

I use per project audio folders, so it's all very organized. All the data (wav files) are in the project audio folder. I can see what I want. When I import the wav files into the track, they don't line up. There is no "marker" info attached to each wav file. I would need to know the exact start point to position the import for each wav file in the track. Then it would work. I can't manually line up all the wav files. It just won't work.

I need "marker" info embedded in the wav files or located somewhere else in Sonar. I was assuming some place Sonar keeps that information. I just called tech support and the guy did not think it is stored anywhere. He suggested importing the files and lining them up. Lining them up would be impossble.

Like you say, the wav files have numbers (sort of like sequential take numbers), reflecting the multiple takes on a track. For example, Vox Harmony1 has multiple takes, so there are multiple wav files with that track name. I need multiple wav files to fill that track; they would need to be placed at the right spot. (The highest number is not going to be the entire track.) And they would have to be manually lined up...I have 8 vocal tracks - I can't line them up. :-)  It would be faster to re-record than to try and line things up.

The weird thing is console view has all the track names correct, as well as other settings that were done fairly late in the session. I can't imagine how I could have wiped the tracks. That would have required some pretty deliberate "human error." What is missing is all the volume envelopes I created as I was preparing to start a rough mix.

Thanks for the help - if anyone knows if there is marker data stored anywhere for the wav takes, please let me know.

I just had this same thing happen. I exported my files to an MP3 rough mix and when I opened the session again, everything was wiped. The vocal track still had some track information, (as in it was highlighted but empty), and I was able to see "Associated Audio Files" and recover it. All of the automation was gone. EZ Drummer midi data was also still available. Plug-in, levels, panning, etc were all still correct on the rest of the track, but the waves were gone. With all of my takes, it is impossible to rebuild. I had a bunch of muted tracks for alternate ideas, etc. I am hoping it was human error where I accidentally hit select all for the bounce and inadvertently deleted the files. As frustrating as that would be, it is better than thinking the software wiped the files. I just don't think that is what happened so I'm posting in case this becomes a recurring issue for all of us.