Might be of help to people 'struggling' with different format audio files. Maja BTW I have chosen for the iPod (MP3, VBR, WAV) wit the Belkin voice recorder (external microphone). Works on Macs and Windows. You can even download files from your computer to the iPod (always have your notes or questions with you when you are doing your recordings :) http://www.apple.com/ipod/behindthewheel.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "phil cash cash" <cashcash@EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU> To: <ILAT@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU> Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 7:09 PM Subject: Audacity tá'c 'alaxp (good day!) ILAT, Audacity just released 1.2.0! Audacity is an open source and completely free audio editor. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ At the 2003 American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) here at the Univ of Arizona, we tested and used Audacity in our course "Computer Applications for Indigenous Communities." We recieved a very postive response from all our students, both elders and college age students alike, on its simplicity and ease of use. The elder students really liked its graphic interface with its "big" buttons. The student's main use of Audacity was simply to capture live speech in digital format and transfer it into a simple multimedia environment like PowerPoint. We used standard headset microphones, though now, you can buy headset microphones with "noise reduction", a very very useful feature that blocks out ambient background noise when recording a native speaker. When recording in Audacity, you are able to use an unlimited number of audio tracks. One of our Hupa students created a traditional song composition with mutiple tracks using only her voice. Audacity supports a wide variety of audio formats (including WAV, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis). In 2003, we created only WAV files in our course due in part to the difficulty in downloading the MP3 plug-in, however, with the latest version it is now much easier to do. You will notice that you download Audacity and the MP3 plug-in separately. After downloading, I did a simple test to create an MP3 file and it went smooth without a hitch. Of course, the advantage of using the MP3 format for your sound file format is the reduction in file size and ease of use in multimedia environments. Btw, Audacity's "help" files are outstanding! I encourage language people to go buy a headset (w/noise reduction; although you really don't have to...really), download Audacity and the MP3 plug-in, and try it out. Send me an MP3 greeting in your language! qÃ"'c (later), phil cash cash (cayuse/nez perce) UofA, ILAT -- | Maja van der Velden | maja@xs4all.nl