Audition Write Error deleted my audio.

[Amicus5FC1]

I was working on a 40 min long recording that was recorded across a span of 3 days. I have opened this file many times since starting the editing process and saved many times and it was working just fine.

Today I sat down to work on my project and out of nowhere I start getting [Audition has encountered an error reading or writing to disk. We recomend you save and restart Audition] when I delete small bits of the audio.

I decided to do as it says and save and quit. But when I restarted and opened audition I am greeted with a waveform but the spectral audio is gone. Anything I do makes the waveform update and go away too. Is there anything I can do at all?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

This may not be particularly good news, although without having the machine in front of me I can't be absolutely sure, but it's possible to make a few general observations about this sort of situation...

It's extremely unlikely that Audition has caused whatever has happened. It's the operating system that writes to disks, not Audition. If you have nothing that plays, then the chances are that you have the peak file displayed with no actual audio. The peak file (.pkf) contains nothing more than the visual information required to display the waveform, and not the waveform itself. In the event of a waveform file failure, the .pkf file is likely to remain intact, and that's what you can see.

We have said, time and time again, that you should never edit the original version of any file, but always edit a copy. It's because things like this can happen, even in the best-ordered situations. The same thing applies with edits - always save a copy of the current version so that you don't lose too much if a disaster occurs.

You haven't said whether you were editing in Waveform or Multitrack views, but I'm guessing that from the lack of spectral information, this is Waveform. In that case you have an additional problem in that Audition saves all of the edits you do as temp files until you do a save, and if you do more edits than there is space available in your temp file location - and that would be the entire program length times as many changes as you made - then yes, the system might crash the file. But that wouldn't be Audition's fault. It also may not be what's happened, as I think Audition will warn you if you get to this situation.

I can't tell what the situation with your actual audio file is, because I don't have sufficient information. But it does sound as though your file may well be corrupted. So really, we'd need some more specific information to get any further.