Digital Recording Equipment (Proprietary Files)

[Steve Fraiberg]

I am a graduate student at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign,
and for my doctoral dissertation I am doing ethnographic research in Israel.
Recently, I purchased several Olympus digital recorders with the intention
of recording meetings, conducting interviews, etc. However, I am quickly
discovering that the proprietary software/files on the Olympus recorders
prevents me from using the sound files on any transcription software other
than the Olympus software, which has limitations. It is also possible that
at some point I may share some of the files, but the proprietary nature of
the recordings seems that it would make this difficult. Does anyone know a
work-around for this problem? Otherwise can someone suggest a recorder of a
similar price/quality that is not proprietary?

Thank you,
Steve