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

[mjb2006]

Get xvi32 (free binary editor) and open the file in it, maybe stretch the window a bit to show more data, then send us a screenshot so we can see the bytes at the beginning of the file. To get the screenshot in Windows Vista and up, look in the Start Menu for the Snipping Tool, under Accessories (and drag it to your taskbar, as it comes in quite handy). It will let you click-drag a box over what you want to copy, then give you the option to save as a PNG. Upload the PNG to ImageShack or any other image sharing service and link to it here with the "Insert Image" button (looks like shapes in a picture frame).