wma to mp3

[Armitage]

I'm in the process of converting my cd collection to mp3. but accidentally converted some of them to wma. better quality I know. but the size of a house. has anybody got or know where I can get a free piece of software to convert them to mp3's with out have to dig all the cd's out again.

Help

[TeaLeaf]

.....and if I may be allowed to tack on a supplementary question:

I was about to start putting my whole CD collection onto the PC and wondered which format to convert to on the PC and which program peeps recommended for the job.

TL.

[suicidal_monkey]

Originally posted by Armitage
I was about to start putting my whole CD collection onto the PC and wondered which format to convert to on the PC and which program peeps recommended for the job.

is this to play on the pc and are you likely to want to use the compressed audio for other things, say in audio editors, or a "mp3" player?

iTunes does a good job of ripping CD's into mp4 (AAC) format. The other post mp3 format to look for is OGG vorbis, though I'm not certain of a good converter. I find that iTunes gives the best and easiest CD-ripping results. well organised CDDB and id-tagging, ...although if you want to edit mp4/aac files you might have a harder job finding decompressors/editors (work well in wniamp.

dBpowerAMP might be useful too for ogg vorbis...

edit2: mp3 is still the codec of the moment, but ogg vorbis, mp4/aac and wma9 are some of the likely contenders for the future. mp4/aac is synonimous with apple/ipod, wma with microsoft, so you can bet those two at least have some decent backing. ogg vorbis might have been picked up by some of the other s/w or h/w companies. Go for mp3 (LAME encoder is apparently the best...) to be current and safe, choose mp4/aac, wma, or ogg vorbis if you feel braver

[DuVeL]

Poweramp rules, I use it al the time! 9,6/10!

[Gh0st Face Killah]

The best piece of software for converting cds that I have come across is Audiograbber. It works at the full read speed of the cd drive rather than audio read speed which alot of others do. It is amazingly configuable, will name mp3s from the track names if you have cd text, normalize the mp3 and allow you to specify the bitrate. Personally I wouldn't use a bitrate under 200k althougth this does create a bigger file you don't suffer as much sound quality loss. get it here.

[Gh0st Face Killah]

Armatige, lots of links and info here about converting wma to mp3.