Please help me salvage recorded MP3 that seems to have been corrupted, [TOS #6: was “Help with file playback issue” in General Audio] Options

[kwdelre]

Hello everyone,

I really need some help here. I recorded a meeting using a MemoQ Pen Recorder MQ-94. It records in MP3 format and has worked in the past. Well, after the meeting I went to download it from the flash drive and the file will not playback on anything. (I've tried all I can on both windos and Mac) The file itself appears to have recorded because it is a 17 mb file, so I know it wrote something. There is clearly an issue with the recorder itself since it used to work fine, but what I need to do is try to recover this file.

When attempting to open the file on a Mac it does nothing. On windows it gives me a general playback error as if it didn't recognize the codec.
The only program I was able to get the file to even open in was Audacity. In Audacity the file appears as a 1.5 sec clip and when I play it, it sounds like the entire hour long meeting in a second.

I tried two programs to repair the file without any luck. (All Media Fixer, and MP3 Repair Tool)

I can't figure out anything else to try at this point to recover this file. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Will

[kwdelre]

Okay, I was able to upload a sample file from the same time of recording.
Uploaded File

Thank you for taking a look.

[splice]

Okay, I was able to upload a sample file from the same time of recording.
Uploaded File

Thank you for taking a look.

Aha... same strange headers.
I wonder if you're supposed to use a utility supplied with the pen to convert these to standard MP3 files?
Some of the adverts imply that it makes 128K bitrate MP3 files,
You still haven't answered the question - have you previously been able to listen to files recorded by this pen?
If so, it implies that it has become defective.

Update: I "fixed" the headers. VLC tries to play it, but it's pretty garbled. There are 2 possibilities:
1. You're supposed to use a utility supplied with the pen to convert these to standard MP3 format.
2. The pen is broken and not correctly writing the files.

This post has been edited by splice: Jan 12 2013, 00:58