File encoding question - fixing corrupted wav files
Main question: What is the encoding used for wav files? Unsigned PCM 8-bit, or is it another type?
Context:
I accidentally formatted my sd card with data I had yet to download. I was able to recover using a recovery wizard (Recuva), but my files are now corrupted. They have the same file size, but most audio players give an error message about a missing codec. I found a suggestion to change to a RAW format and import into Audacity. Using the defaults this works and I can barely hear recorded sounds but only through a significant amount of white noise. This indicates the the data is there. (I had downloaded about half of the data - 9 days of recording - before some technical glitches, so all was not lost, but it would be nice to get the full dataset back.)
The default file specification in Audacity is:
Encoding: Unsigned 8-bit PCM
Byte order: Little-endian
Start offset: 0 bytes
Sample rate: 44100 Hz
Are these the correct file properties for AudioMoth wav files?
It would definitely be worth checking when the errors occur more often. Either around 05:00 UTC which is the end of the daily recording period, or toward the end of the deployment. I guess these batteries are lasting about a week? We normally use a slight sleep / record duty cycle to allow the batteries to recover a little, and if you use sleep 5s and record 295 seconds, then all the files will be nicely aligned on the 5 minute intervals.