BR1600 Lost data disaster - help wanted!

[Kevin Mammoth]

Hello all - I'm hoping some wizard out there might be able to help with a little problem I have encountered.

Basically today I was recording vocals on two songs.  I finished song 1, and then moved onto song 2 (after dutifully saving everything on song 1).  After finishing song 2, I decided to go back to song 1 for another listen. Much to my dismay, every track on song 1 had disappeared - ie not just the newly recorded vocal tracks, but every audio track I had recorded in the song.  The track cursor for each track was located at the last recorded virtual track - but not a scrap of audio remained.

Most tracks were backed up to computer, but not the vocals I had just recorded - so my question is, does anyone know how to retrieve lost data from a BR1600 hard drive? The "Song Info" function shows lots of data, so I'm hopeful everything is on the hard drive somewhere - but does anyone know how I can get it back?

I tried a full backup to computer, but it failed - and I tried a song backup to CD, and that gave me a Hard Drive Read Error.  Not overly encouraging I know.

Any help on how to get my audio tracks back, especially the vocal tracks I hadn't backed up, would be greatly appreciated.  Otherwise I'll be testing out the Roland Customer Support service for the first time - cheerio - Kev.

PS - I know I could go back and do the vocals again, that will be my fallback if all else fails...

[64Guitars]

Have you tried the suggestions from the Troubleshooting section of the manual?

• Has the track volume been lowered?
  In some cases the actual volume level may not match the
  position of the fader, for example when the scene has
  been switched. If so, move the fader up and down so that
  the volume level will match the fader position.
• Has the track been muted? (The REC TRACK
  indicator will be blinking in green.)
• Is the V-Track setting for a different V-Track?
• Has the track type been set correctly?
• Is the BR-1600CD in Mastering mode?
  In Mastering mode, sounds are output only from Tracks
  9/10.

If those suggestions don't help, then I think you should phone Roland tech support. In Australia, the tech support number is (02) 9982-8266. They're available Monday through Friday, 8:30am to 5pm, Australian Eastern Standard Time.

[Kevin Mammoth]

Thanks 64G - I contacted the Roland support people but they couldn't help.  I took the BR to my local computer shop - he removed the hard drive and hooked it up to a recovery program, and could see track data in the song file - but he couldn't figure out how to get the BR to recognise it.  We tried burning it to CD and loading it as a new song via the data load function, but the BR wouldn't recognise the CD.  I have tried a USB back up but that failed as well.

It is very frustrating knowing the data is there but not being able to access it.  I might bug the Roland people one more time - maybe I'll get a more knowledgable guy - but I'm close to conceding defeat on my lost vocal tracks.  My bigger worry is that this might keep happening - maybe I need a new recorder.....

I can't look at my 1600 the same way anymore, this is definitely a dark phase in our relationship...

[AndyR]

That's worrying

Sorry for the long post, but I had a problem with my BR1600 the other weekend on my last project and what I learnt might have a bearing on your problem.

My problem wasn't yours (at least I don't think so, anyway), but it did result in lost data - so it's probably worth dumping in this thread anyway:

I was tracking backing vocals for one 8 bar section of my last project. I was using all 8 mono tracks for this. A lot of arming/disarming tracks, searching back to a song marker, record/play/stop.

Suddenly, near the end of the job, all controls on the BR1600 stopped working, just froze completely. I'd just pressed record after arming a track for the last vocal. I leaned into the mic, pressed play, and nothing happened...

The beast looked ok - all lights as I'd left them, display exactly as expected, just not a single control would work. No sound from the mic into my headphones either. But I did notice the input stage (and trim pots) were still working - clicking my fingers at the mic would cause the clip light on the input track to light. This meant it was still supplying phantom power to the mic, as well. Nothing registered on the main display though.

I did a lot of manual reading (touching on areas that might affect you) but eventually I reasoned that the main "brain" of the recorder had hung for some reason. My biggest concern was that you need the "yes" button as part of the standard shutdown procedure... if it wasn't responding to the buttons, I couldn't save, and I couldn't shut down properly... I was worried a) about losing the new vocals, and b) more major corruption of the project... there was bugger all I could do about it though.

So I pressed the power switch... and nothing happened... AGH!

I was just reaching for the mains switch when a big error message appeared on the screen and the box switched itself off. It was something like "Forced Shutdown ... Error", but it was quick, and I was on the wrong side to read it all. It looks to me like the power switch was working, and it has its own routines, but the main "brain" didn't respond so it performed an emergency power down.

I lost the new vocals (and all the changes to the track inserts I'd made during the work) because they weren't saved, but on start-up everything else was as expected (I didn't check any of the other song projects, though).

ANYWAY - how this might affect you:

While I was reading the manual I learnt enough to fear several things that did not happen to me. But, from what I read it sounds like you might well have a bad sector on the hard disk. Not so much in the audio files, but in the song file where they're all registered - hence they seem to be on the disk but the song is sat there going "no mate, not got no audio here, you must be mistaken...".

Another possibility is Song Optimise - do you use it? I've never felt the need to use it before. Then with this project it was taking longer and LONGER to perform a save. Obviously after my scare I started saving a lot more often!! And it was taking ages. What I found in the manual is that all overdubs/punch-ins/etc and editing leave the original stuff lying around. I assume this (as well as using up hard disk space) is what is slowing down my saves. Song optimise is designed to sort this out for you - it removes all the stuff you thought was gone anyway.

Sounds great I thought, until I read the note box on page 70 of the manual, to paraphrase:

• It takes a long time, but don't turn off while it's proceesing. - Yeah right, no worries...
• If power is interrupted, possibility of irrepairable damage to ALL songs audio data. - Yeah, makes sense to me...
• Song opt clears the edit history, can't undo anything carried out before the opt - Yeah tell me something that's not obvious...
• "It is also important to note that if you use Undo after saving a song that has just been optimized, all audio data will be deleted" (My italics) - You what??!! What exactly do you mean? I do not like the sound of this...

I have not used Song Optimise so far because of this last bit... but I'm wondering, do you? From what I've read in the manual, which is usually pretty clear, I've taken this last bit as a warning to save and shutdown after optimising just in case you need to use Undo again during the session- one click too many and the whole song is gone.

(I might be being overly cautious in how I interpreted this, but I'm a Technical Author myself. To me, that last point read like a major hole that can't be fixed but the author had to get round it somehow, and warn the user, without admitting the hole to user)

Now, if you did use Optimise, I'd be very interested to know. Because that would imply there are serious problems that could mean not audio "deleted" but actually the song file itself corrupted (the fact you can't reload the song from a CD because the BR doesn't recognise what it's written).
 

[Kevin Mammoth]

Thanks for that long response AndyR - very interesting.  Sorry to hear about your lost tracks, especially after all that effort, what a bummer.  I've pretty much given up on my lost vox - in fact I recorded some replacement tracks this afternoon (and have just backed them up to computer.)

Turning to your comments.

Bad sector on the hard drive - I thought that was a possibility, but my computer shop guy assured me he ran the drive through a program to check for problems and it came up OK.

Song Optimise - now that note from the manual is a doozy, I missed that.  I always optimise after each recording session - and I must have seen something in the manual in the dim past to cause me to use some caution, because my practice is to save the song, then optimise, then save again, then shut down.  The reason I started optimising was because it was taking multiple CD's to back up a song - once I started optimising I was down to 1 cd, or 2 at most for a big song. 

Back to my recent data loss episode  - I don't recall optimising and then pressing undo, but then I may have blindly done an optimise on auto pilot, and then absent-mindedly pressed "undo" instead of "exit", or something like that, before moving to the next song.  It could well be the answer, it seems to fit.

In a funny way it is reassuring, as it makes me think there is less chance the drive is stuffed.  On the other hand, it is going to make me completely paranoid every time I optimise from now on.

I'm going to back-up everything I can off my 1600 and then do a full initialize, hopefully that will clear off any gremlins.

Well spotted AndyR, many thanks for that post -  it may even help repair my relationship with the 1600.  I had taken to reading the Br800 manual - but maybe there is still some life left in the 1600.  Just be very very careful when optimising!......

[AndyR]

And in turn - that's made me feel better about and more confident in the Optimise process.

And especially in hearing that it severely reduces the CDs needed for a backup. I think I might give it a go.

On the lost vocals - did you do them better than what you remember of the originals? I did, and in half the time!

I'm not sure what caused my problem - there were 25 markers in the song, most I've used so far, but well short of the 100 maximum. It was quite a long session without pause - that's the sort of thing that could cause a slow memory leak to freeze up a program. It's also possible I pressed some crazy key-combination that confused it - I tend to get a bit clicky around that area of the machine when I'm doing backing vox. I've been known to switch to bounce mode by accident when I thought I was setting a marker, or clearing my precious marker when I think I'm setting a punch-in, that sort of thing.

Good to hear your confidence is restored somewhat in the thing though. Mine was knocked for an hour or so and then I forgot all about it once I was back up and running. My wife was more worried about it than I was. I have had this nagging doubt in my mind about optimise though. I want to try it because it will speed some things up and therefore encourage me to actually do them (er... backup, mainly!!).

[Kevin Mammoth]

Despite the potential for losing entire songs (backup, and backup often!) I still recommend using optimise.  If you want to see how much data you are carrying in a song, go into "Song Info" and see - then optimise (and save) and then go back and look at Song Info - you may be surprised at the amount of deleted data you are carrying (and needlessly saving when you back up).

With your data loss - I have never used markers, so I'm not sure how volatile they are - and the "crazy key combination" might be the answer - basically I think while the old 1600 is usually a fairly placid beast, it has to be approached cautiously when trying anything too adventurous.

On the lost vocals - did you do them better than what you remember of the originals? I did, and in half the time!

No way, those lost vocals of mine will only get better with every passing year!