Don't know if there's a simpler method for this, but after Googling around I came across Avidemux, which, while doesn't have official Debian packages, does have unofficial ones set up by Christian Marillat. So what you need is Marillat's private stash in your sources.list for apt. When writing this, it's at:


After that you can install avidemux (along with some other packages it depends on) and rip the wav from your avi file. The program itself is quite self-explanatory (it comes with a full-blown GUI) so I'll just skip explaining that. There's a forum for Avidemux users should you need one.