Best free Sound Recorder for WinXP?

[Robert Macy]

Anybody recommend a good sound recorder that acts a little like the
one provided by MS? but not limited to 60 seconds.

Would like FREE, runs on WinXP, small, easy to use. produces .wav, or
selectable.

 

[Paul]

Anybody recommend a good sound recorder that acts a little like the
one provided by MS? but not limited to 60 seconds.

Would like FREE, runs on WinXP, small, easy to use. produces .wav, or
selectable.

There is a trick to using Sound Recorder. It can record a longer
period of audio than 60 seconds. It may be using memory for
recording, but seems to need the association of a big enough
file, to convince it there is room. I think I've had mine boosted
up over the 1 hour mark. Just took an empty file to do it.
And actually, Audacity can be used to quickly make a file for
the job (some of the sound effects have a duration parameter,
for making long samples).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Recorder_(Windows)

"Versions of Sound Recorder before Windows Vista recorded
audio to memory, rather than to the hard disk, and the length
of recording was by default limited to 60 seconds.

Microsoft recommends recording 60 seconds and pressing the
Record button again to record another minute. [Ha! Pure gold]

It is easy to achieve longer recording times by using "File | Save"
with "Edit | Insert File ..." to increase it. For example, saving
an initial 1 minute recording as "1min.wav" and then inserting
the "1min.wav" file 9 times will create a 10 minute long recording
which can then be saved as "10min.wav". This "10min.wav" file can
then be inserted 5 more times (or as many times as there is room
in primary memory) to create a "1hour.wav" file.

By recording over any of these longer sound files, Sound Recorder
can have an uninterrupted arbitrary recording time (limited only
by primary memory)."

So you can torture the little Sound Recorder if you want.

In fact, there are situations where you might want two audio programs.
Audacity playing a sound. Sound Recorder, recording the results (from
say, a microphone). So there are occasions where I've used both
programs at the same time.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Robert Macy]

Anybody recommend a good sound recorder that acts a little like the
one provided by MS? but not limited to 60 seconds.

Would like FREE, runs on WinXP, small, easy to use. produces .wav, or
selectable.

There is a trick to using Sound Recorder. It can record a longer
period of audio than 60 seconds. It may be using memory for
recording, but seems to need the association of a big enough
file, to convince it there is room. I think I've had mine boosted
up over the 1 hour mark. Just took an empty file to do it.
And actually, Audacity can be used to quickly make a file for
the job (some of the sound effects have a duration parameter,
for making long samples).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Recorder_(Windows)

    "Versions of Sound Recorder before Windows Vista recorded
     audio to memory, rather than to the hard disk, and the length
     of recording was by default limited to 60 seconds.

     Microsoft recommends recording 60 seconds and pressing the
     Record button again to record another minute. [Ha! Pure gold]

     It is easy to achieve longer recording times by using "File | Save"
     with "Edit | Insert File ..." to increase it. For example, saving
     an initial 1 minute recording as "1min.wav" and then inserting
     the "1min.wav" file 9 times will create a 10 minute long recording
     which can then be saved as "10min.wav". This "10min.wav" file can
     then be inserted 5 more times (or as many times as there is room
     in primary memory) to create a "1hour.wav" file.

     By recording over any of these longer sound files, Sound Recorder
     can have an uninterrupted arbitrary recording time (limited only
     by primary memory)."

So you can torture the little Sound Recorder if you want.

In fact, there are situations where you might want two audio programs.
Audacity playing a sound. Sound Recorder, recording the results (from
say, a microphone). So there are occasions where I've used both
programs at the same time.

HTH,
      Paul

Paul,

PURE GOLD!!! Thank you.

 

[Robert Macy]

Audacity on SourceForge is #1 in my book.http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

David,

Thank you for the recommendation, and especially for the URL. The size
at 20+MB is a bit daunting, but I like 'opensource' software, their
support [usually through an intelligent group] is outstanding.

 

[Rasta Robert]

Anybody recommend a good sound recorder that acts a little like the
one provided by MS? but not limited to 60 seconds.

Would like FREE, runs on WinXP, small, easy to use. produces .wav, or
selectable.

Two free small and easy direct to disk recorders, one also with scheduler for
unattended recordings while you're away or sleeping:

Memo session recorder, old but good:
manual / time scheduled recording + support for free mp3 encoders
+ on-the-fly mp3 compression

http://messer.aerolit.pl/

HarddiskOgg - On-the-fly encoder for recording analog
audio sources (i.e. line-in or microphone) directly to Ogg
Vorbis/Wave/MP3, featuring auto-normalization and command
line support.

http://www.fridgesoft.de/harddiskogg.php

 

[Twayne]

In

Anybody recommend a good sound recorder that acts a
little like the one provided by MS? but not limited to 60
seconds.

Would like FREE, runs on WinXP, small, easy to use.
produces .wav, or selectable.

Audacity
It allows recording, editting, trimming, combining, all sort of stuff.

HTH,

Twayne`

 

[Robert Macy]

Two free small and easy direct to disk recorders, one also with schedulerfor
unattended recordings while you're away or sleeping:

Memo session recorder, old but good:
manual / time scheduled recording + support for free mp3 encoders
+ on-the-fly mp3 compression

http://messer.aerolit.pl/

HarddiskOgg - On-the-fly encoder for recording analog
audio sources (i.e. line-in or microphone) directly to Ogg
Vorbis/Wave/MP3, featuring auto-normalization and command
line support.

http://www.fridgesoft.de/harddiskogg.php

Thank you for those URLs!

Interesting that messer was developed on Win98, yet for LARGE files,
they suggest using NTSF file structures. But small size is great!

thanks for that second one, too

I'll try them both.