Audio: What we can't repair — and where to go instead.

When repair isn't the answer

DRM-protected music: Purchased or streamed tracks locked to a store or app (Apple Music, protected AAC, and similar) are encrypted and tied to your account. They aren't corrupted — they're deliberately locked, and a file repair can't and shouldn't unlock them. For these, re-download the track from the service you got it from.

Deleted or formatted files: If the recording was deleted, or the storage was formatted, this isn't a repair problem — the file isn't damaged, it's gone from the file system. Getting it back is data recovery: carving the audio off the raw storage before it's overwritten. Stop using the device immediately and use a dedicated data-recovery tool. FileFix repairs files you still have; it can't bring back files that were removed.

Physically damaged phones, cards, or drives: If a phone, card, or drive is cracked, water-damaged, or not detected, the problem is the hardware, not the audio file. No software can read data off media that won't mount. This is a job for a physical data-recovery service. Once the data is safely copied off, if the audio file itself turns out to be corrupted, we're happy to try repairing it then.

Genuinely empty (0-byte) files: If a file is truly 0 bytes, there is no audio inside it — the recorder never wrote any sound. There's nothing to rebuild, and no tool can recover audio that was never recorded. If your file shows a real size but won't play, that's different and often repairable — try a repair.