please bear w/ me... i tend to ramble, and be too verbose, but i like to lay down the background so y'all know where i'm coming from-- to describe all aspects of my situation as much as possible... so here goes...

i am the coordinator of an event here at PSU that i call the "Songwriters' Recording Showcase". it's an effort to breathe life into the nearly nonexistant original-music scene here, and moreover, to give local artists a venue to perform. the UNIQUE twist that i offer as an incentive to bring the performers out is that i am recording their performances each week, and since these artists aren't payed to perform, i'm going to package a nice little CD for 'em in a Jewel case w/ cover art, etc. so that they will have something of semi-decent quality to shop themselves to venues in hopes of scoring a "real" gig for themselves.

Fairly experienced w/ my band's own PC based DAW, and having logged MANY hours in production, using Waves plugins (i love that C4 !) to tweak the heck out of some stuff which might have otherwise sounded like garbage (the idea was to have a simple DAW just for laying down our writing in progress-- yet to do it "right", and go through the motions as if we were in a pro studio, but the band can't afford quality outboard gear-- compressors, mics, etc-- heck, we're using PZM's to capture the drums-- so believe me, when i say teaking, I'm TWEAKING w/ plugins-- all w/in the digital realm), so i'm really excited to see how my plan unfolds w/ these live one-take recordings-- taking the signal out of the venue's house PA mixing board during the songwriters' live sets, and then to take it home and play with it till i get something of quality. it CAN be done. i'm a believer.

to my advantage, this venue's PA board is a hand-me-down from a local recording studio, so it actually has direct outs for each channel, and since most of these musicians show up w/ just an acoustic guitar and their voice, i can, in theory get 2 completely independent channels going into my M-Audio Mobile Pre USB. which allows me to get Voice = left, Guitar = right. then i can take it all home and tweak 'em out as much as i can w/ my available plugins, and what i think is my half-decent ear-- ideally working w/ isolated vox and guitar captured from those direct outs per board channel.

however, it's unfortunate that, so far, i've been unable to utilize those direct channel outs cause when i try it, i get a serious, overpowering hum (and plugging the 1/4" jack into those direct channel outs creats a helluva "pop" in the mains too-- which makes no sense to me, cause it's an output!) and it also peaks the input level of the M-Audio so bad that i have to crank it down to "off", cutting off the input level altogether (and strangely, just plugging into input #1 peaks #2 also!)-- i have NO idea what is up with that... maybe something in the board's setup is wired wrong, or maybe it's a grounding issue, or maybe the board is just "shot"... i've no clue, and the owner of the board is "indisposed", so i have no expert advice available while i'm at work, doing the recording. i just don't understand why the individual channel direct outs would cause that result.

so, i've temporarily abandoned the idea of isolating the channels, resorting to using this board's unique mono XLR send (which, located next to the main sends, this mono XLR output seems to function with the mains cause the level is directly affected by the main board faders). sure, for recording purposes, it ain't stereo, and it ain't isolated channels, but it IS a nice clean mono signal, so at this point, i'm happy that i can at least get SOMETHING out of that board. okay, i'm done telling my background story. now for the incident that has brought me to seek advice from the vast knowledge of this forum's members.

i had tried this whole PC live-recording process on the debut week of my Songwriters' event w/ NO luck, so this was my second week-- second attempt. i was delighted to see that signal going into my USB soundcard-- allowing me to dial in the perfect input gain, and Vegas was making a nice wave w/ proper peaks and valleys and virtually no noise. boy was i happy to get to that point!

FYI- i'm capturing the audio signal from the mixing board by using an M-Audio Mobile Pre USB into my home PC (Athlon XP 1.4Ghz) using Vegas 4 (yeah, a bitch to lug all that stuff into the bar. no, i don't own a laptop!). now, finally...

MY CRITICAL PROBLEM AT HAND:
tonight while recording a stellar performance, i stepped away from the PC for a moment, only to return to see the XP welcome screen as the thing was booting back up! yes, i made the mistake of leaving behind my APC Battery Backup/ surge protector. what a case of live and learn the hard way!

to reiterate, i'm here for advice because i have a glimmer of hope that i will be able to salvage what was recorded tonight. the wave that was being tracked at the time of the unexpected PC shutdown is still here-- weighing in at over 235 Megs according to XP! but when i open it (in a media player, or sound forge), there is nothing there. keep in mind, this is my second "failed" attempt at trying to do something good for these song writers... first time i couldn't get ANY signal... now this time, all was going great, but the power failure ruined about 30 mins of a really nice performance from a good songwriter. i actually do have about a 45 second clip, seperate file, which sounds great! but, i feel bad for the guy-- he has no demo yet, and he's got talent! i really wanted to present him w/ something when it was all over.

knowing that files aren't always what they appear to be, i'm going to believe that the recorded audio is in fact there in that file.

i'm an ace w/ video editing, and i've successfully made "good" files from broken avi's, and all that tedious stuff, so i know a file w/ no
recognizable video or audio data isn't necessarily always a file w/ no data-- you just have to know how to find it! but, those were video files, and i've never had to worry about it w/ audio until now.

so i've Googled for "wav repair" and all sorts of combinations of other keywords trying to find a program that might be able to see the data that needs to be seen to turn this file back into a recognizable wav. i found a cool little program called "Vidlizard"-- it's functionality seems to focus on video applications, but its general description claims to have the ability to repair wav files. from what i can tell, it doesn't do anything amazing but show me the file properties-- i suspect that maybe it COULD help if i knew how to utilize its functionality.

please follow the links to the screen captures that i've prepared for you.
[="http://www.sonamusic.com/screen_captures/soundforge_repair_interpolate.JPG"]Sound Forge[/]="http://www.sonamusi…"]Sound Forge[/] - Tools>Repair>(all options- same result)
[[url=http://="http://www.sonamusi…"]VidLizard - drag n drop[/]="http://www.sonamusi…"]VidLizard - drag n drop[/]
[="http://www.sonamusic.com/screen_captures/vidlizard_ds_audio-renderer.JPG"]VidLizard - DirectShow Audio Renderer[/]="http://www.sonamusi…"]VidLizard - DirectShow Audio Renderer[/]
[[url=http://="http://www.sonamusi…"]VidLizard - DirectShow Advanced[/]="http://www.sonamusi…"]VidLizard - DirectShow Advanced[/]
[="http://www.sonamusic.com/screen_captures/vidlizard_file-info.JPG"]VidLizard - File Info [/]="http://www.sonamusi…"]VidLizard - File Info [/]

do you know of any app out there that might be able to help me?
if anyone is willing to take on the task, i'd like for you to experiment by allowing me to transfer the file to you on an AIM rendezvous, or
some other method by which i might get it to you-- due to its large size.

or do you think this file is in fact junk, and the recording is lost? i'm the consumate optimist, so i really want to try to "fix" this file.

i hope someone has a positive suggestion for me. of course i do-- we always look for want we want to hear, don't we!

thank you so much for reading to this point. i owe you one!

if you have any interest in my successful production work, just to prove i do know how to screw in a lightbulb, check out [[url=http://="http://www.e-nation…"]the mp3's[/]="http://www.e-nation…"]the mp3's[/] of my own recording production of my band-- all done in our basement studio w/ PZM's for the drums, a POD, sans-amp for the bass, and an SM58. DAW includes Pentium 4, Behringer Eurodesk, Gina, Vegas, Sound Forge, and the Waves Platinum Bundle (and a few other neato plugins here and there, like a groovy amp-sim, the Steinberg Loudness Maximizer, etc)

very much looking forward to what you have to say.
thanks!
-js