Converting WMA to MP3

[Howard]

I have many songs on my computer that are saved as WMA, is there any way to convert them to MP3 files?

 

[alltaken]

first thing to mention is this.

converting a Lossey format to another lossy format is not recomended at all.

imagine this.

i tape a VHS of a program off the TV, the quality goes down a bit. then i give it to my friend and they copy the VHS onto another VHS, then another one puts it onto his computer off that VHS and converts it to MPEG and then burns it to a VCD.

if you compare the first TV broadcast of the program to the VCD version you will notice a HUGE difference in quality.


a WMA has lost information from a CD so sounds worse than a CD, converting WMA to MP3 will loose even more information, so the MP3 will sound worse than the WMA (quite considerably)


it is seriously frowned apon to re-encoded.


i personally have my entire music collection in FLAC which is perfect 100% bit for bit CD quality.

anyway i say just leave it as WMA unless its really really needed to stick onto a portable MP3 player. in which case re-rip from the original cd's to MP3 (but i assume you downloaded off the net, at which time i recomend you download them again)


Alltaken

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[Woodman]

Flacs large?

-----
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[BunnyStroker]

Yes, Flacs are large.

Lossless audio compression formats (flac, shorten, monkey's audio) can only typically compress to maybe 60% of original file size.

<b>1.4 Ghz AMD T-Bird underclocked to 1 Ghz...just to be safe!</b>

 

[Howard]

I have understood the drawbacks of mp3 and wma files, however the thing is, I have a mp3 player (iriver ifp-380) and a mp3 cd player, it doesn't support lossless format, therefore most of my stuff are still in mp3/wma. I'm looking at the iPod right now, but it doesn't support wma, this is why I'm courious on how to comvert wma to MP3 without re-ripping or re-downloading the songs.

 

[BunnyStroker]

IIRC, winamp supports WMA.

Just turn on winamp's diskwriter and play your WMA files. Winamp will convert them to WAVs.

Now use your favorite MP3 encoder to convert them to MP3s. Unless your favorite encoder is LAME, you are wrong.

<b>1.4 Ghz AMD T-Bird underclocked to 1 Ghz...just to be safe!</b>