[PLUG] Noisy mp3s

[Richard C. Steffens]

I have some mp3 recordings to transcribe. For some reason these 
recordings have some noise in them. What it sounds like is the noise 
left over when I use a filter in Audacity to remove some noise. (I know, 
that's a bit weird, but maybe some of you who use the Audacity filter 
will recognize the effect.) Anyway, the other weird part of this is that 
if I listen to them on my wife's Win7 machine, they are clear as a bell. 
They are also clear as a bell if I listen to them on my laptop running 
XP. The same laptop hardware running Ubuntu 10.4 has the noise.

Not all mp3 files on my Ubuntu machine exhibit this problem. So far, 
it's just the two. They both were recorded phone conversations, but I 
don't know the recording technology used. It could have been a hand held 
recorder sitting next to a speaker phone -- that's the usual technique 
-- or it could have been a fancy phone system that has the ability to 
record a call. The call is between two offices of a big, east coast 
consulting company that could very well have that technology.

Anyway, does anyone have any ideas about why the sound on my Linux 
machines show this noise while the sound on two Winders machines does 
not? And more important, is there anything I can do about it, other than 
listening on XP while typing on Ubuntu?

Thanks.

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens