[CentOS] audio recorder compatibility

Wed Apr 13 20:49:47 UTC 2011
Ljubomir Ljubojevic <office at plnet.rs>

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On 4/12/2011 5:12 PM, ken wrote:
>> I'm shopping for a small/tiny audio recorder, the kind for recording in
>> a class, interviews, etc... not really music, just voice.  Per usual, a
>> lot of these write their audio files in some Windows format, e.g., WMA.
>>   As a confirmed Linux guy, I'd want to offload the audio files in some
>> format that Linux can read/play natively.  I've read a sketchy
>> suggestion that there's a  Linux app or utility to do a translation from
>> WMA,<http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/127583>, but I always like to
>> keep things as simple as possible and so would much prefer avoiding the
>> hassle and possible failure of conversion apps and Windows-format crap
>> generally.
>>
>> Secondly, connecting to my laptop... I've got a sound card, but it
>> doesn't have LineIn, just mike and headphone jacks; neither of these is
>> good for input, but...  Many audio recorders these days connect with USB
>> (which I've got), so that's the most likely connection path.
>>
>> Given these parameters, does anyone have good experiences with a really
>> small audio recorder and offloading and then playing its sound files on
>> Linux?
> 
> Android phones have an app called 'voice recorder' (and probably others) 
> that might be good enough to avoid carrying another device. The one on 
> my phone stores an .asf file.  I don't have a linux box with audio 
> enabled but I think mplayer is supposed to handled that.
> 

ASF is Microsoft proprietary format. MPlayer can play it only if you add 
non-foss decoder/codec.

Ljubomir