Convert Samsung Voice Recordings from 3GA to MP3

Samsung smartphones have the default Voice Recorder app comes with the phone which is very handy for us to record voices. Samsung also makes the voice recording and sharing of voice files very convenient. If you want to transfer voice recordings from Samsung to computer, simply connect your phone to computer via USB, then browse to the Sound folder in your phone’s internal storage, you will then be able to copy and past voice recordings from Samsung mobile to your PC or Mac computer. You can also send voice recordings from Samsung to computer through email. If you like to share voice recording files with other mobile phone users, you can do that through email, WhatsApp, Skype and many other tools. One big issue with Samsung voice recording files we found is the incompatible audio format.

samsung galaxy voice recorder app

A lot of users find they cannot play Samsung voice recordings on Windows PC. Samsung galaxy phones save the audio in 3GA format which is not recognizable on Windows PC unless you have installed third party audio players for 3GA audio or have associated 3GA with an existing media player on the Mac or Windows computer.

Play 3GA audio on Windows and Mac

There are various media players and programs can open 3GA files on both Windows and Mac users. For example, Windows users can use the classic Windows Media Player, which can still be found in the most recent Windows 11, to play 3ga music on PC. Mac users can use QuickTime Player to open 3ga documents. The most popular third-party, free and open source media player, VLC Media Player, is also a great option when you like to open or even convert 3GA audio files on Windows and Mac computers.

Rename 3GA to MP3

If you simply want to play Samsung voice recordings in 3GA format on a Windows PC, there is an extremely easy workaround for that. When your media player can’t recognize 3GA files, you can try to rename its extension from .3ga to .mp3 first. We found this simple trick works with the stock Media Player on Windows PC and other audio players.

convert 3GA to MP3

3GA is audio-only version of the 3GP (3GPP) multimedia file format. Basically it is only media container not the video codec. That’s why renaming the extension from 3ga to mp3 seems to work on Windows computers. In fact, you can also rename Samsung voice recordings from 3ga to 3gp thus playable on Windows, or rename Samsung voice recordings from 3ga to wmv and so on.

Convert Samsung Voice Recordings from 3GA to MP3

The above file name and extension rename seems to be simple enough to convert Samsung voice recordings to mp3 or convert 3ga to mp3 on computer. However you will still run into incompatibility issues when you send the converted audio file to a device or player which does not support the audio codec used in the audio file.

The real way and best way to convert Samsung voice recordings from 3GA to MP3 or other audio formats to download an audio converter and transcode them.

Method 1. Convert 3GA using Audacity

Without a doubt, audacity is one of the most useful audio processing software. It is powerful, free and open source.

Download and install this free program onto your PC. Launch it and click Open from the top menu bar to select and open the .3ga file in Audacity. Then click File > Export, choose output format you like, such as MP3, WAV, OGG or else, then select a file name, location and save it to your computer. This is probably the easiest way to transcode 3GA audio to a different format or codec.

audacity for windows to export audio to computer
audacity for windows to export audio to computer

Method 2. Convert 3GA using VLC media player

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and converter. We can use it to convert audios on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Run VLC media player on your computer. Here we will use its Windows version on a PC in this demo. Once the media player opened, click the Media menu, choose Convert / Save from the drop-down menu list.

vlc player for windows open media add files to convert

The Open Media dialog appears. Click +Add button to import the 3ga audio, then click Convert / Save button at the bottom right corner.

The Convert opens as a new window. Here we can choose an audio profile, such as Audio – MP3, Audio – OGG, Audio – FLAC, etc. Select the target folder to save the audio file from the Destination file box, then click Start to convert the 3GA to mp3, ogg, flac, or other audio format you have specified.

3 thoughts on “Convert Samsung Voice Recordings from 3GA to MP3”

    1. we have not tested .vy3 audios yet. can you send us some audio file for testing purpose so we can get back to you when we find any solution? you can send us the audio via email which can be found at the top left corner of this page or our Contact page. Also please specify the device which you used to record the audio file.

  1. If you want to play 3GA successfully every time and on every device the best solution is to convert 3GA to MP3, WAV, WMA, FLAC, AAC, AC3, M4A, etc

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