asterisk users - May 2003 - Stupid question about recording prompts

I am, as this question will make very obvious, not exactly a guru when 
it comes to audio under Linux.

I'd like to record some prompts using a nice microphone and my Ensoniq 
sound card, and then convert them to gsm/wav for use with asterisk.

What Linux command would I use to a) do the recordings, and then b) 
convert them to the appropriate formats?

I know there are sampling/stereo/platform issues, and am hoping to save 
a bit of trial-and-error time.

Thanks.

B.

Hi
> I'd like to record some prompts using a nice microphone and my Ensoniq 
> sound card, and then convert them to gsm/wav for use with asterisk.
> 
> What Linux command would I use to a) do the recordings, and then b) 
> convert them to the appropriate formats?
I used Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) under linux for
doing the recording prompts (as mark suggested sometimes ago
onto this list). Is a nice , powerful & simple tool.

Then, after recording them as 16bit/44Khz/mono wav files,
I simply converted them with a batch command to gsm with sox.
For example, if u have several waves in 1 dir, you can simply do

for I in *.wav ; do sox $I -r 8000 -b -c1 `basename $I .wav`.gsm ; done

that will batch convert all files into gsm, using the same filename
(but ending with .gsm), ready 4 asterisk.

Matteo.

>>You should record them directly in 16kbit/8000hz/mono,  converting them
down from a higher sample rate >>will add quantization noise into the
file.
For all those that are curious about quantization noise

quantization noise: Synonym quantizing noise.
quantizing noise: Noise caused by the error of approximation in
quantization.
Note: Quantizing noise is dependent on the particular quantization process
used and the statistical characteristics of the quantized signal. Synonym
quantization noise.

Where
http://www.atis.org/tg2k/_noise.html
noise: 1. An undesired disturbance within the frequency band of interest;
the summation of unwanted or disturbing energy introduced into a
communications system from man-made and natural sources

http://www.atis.org/tg2k/_quantization_noise.html
quantization: A process in which the continuous range of values of an analog
signal is sampled and divided into nonoverlapping (but not necessarily
equal) subranges, and a discrete, unique value is assigned to each subrange.