[Lamplighter]

Hello all- I have around 2000 songs (WMA 128kbps) in my "Music" folder on my laptop and am wondering if there is a program I can download that will let me do a mass conversion of these files into MP3 ?
Thank you for any help !!!

Cheers, LL-

 

[psyllium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lamplighter /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hello all- I have around 2000 songs (WMA 128kbps) in my "Music" folder on my laptop and am wondering if there is a program I can download that will let me do a mass conversion of these files into MP3 ? Thank you for any help !!! Cheers, LL-

You'll lose a lot of quality going from WMA to MP3 unless you go to a really high bitrate of MP3. Why do you need to do the conversion? You might be better off re-ripping directly to variable bitrate MP3 (with the LAME encoder). This of course assumes you have the original CDs available still

.

If you didn't want to re-rip for whatever reason, maybe foobar will do it? Someone else will know, surely...

 

[Lamplighter]

Cheeers for that psyllium- Honestly I was just looking to do a mass conversion simply thinking that MP3 would be a more universal format as opposed to WMA. I have a Toshiba gigabeat and am looking to get something new and figured MP3 would be more widely accepted in whatever I decided to get.
I am still weighing options and have to do some research, so maybe this is not really necessary.
When you mention a loss in sound quality is that because of the conversion itself or is it because WMA has better sound quality as MP3 (for similar kbps) ?
I do have all the original CD's but was trying to avoid re-ripping everything for a new player, but am still researching and thats why I posted here

Cheers again, LL-

 

[psyllium]

When you convert anything to MP3 (or to any other lossy format) you will lose quality.

Chances are your new player will play WMA anyway... it's pretty standard these days. But if it doesn't play WMA it might play something better like MP4 (aka AAC). This format is higher quality than WMA and MP3 at the same bitrate... but you would of course have to re-rip in order to use it.

 

[gkl]

You will loose quality because both of the formats are lossy. That means, when you ripped songs from the CD (losless audio) to WMA, you lost some audio information (so the files would be small). When you convert from WMA to MP3, you will loose even more audio information as WMAs will be treated like originals before. That's how I understand it, could be wrong though.

EDIT damn you, psyllium

 

[Lamplighter]

The whole thing is kind of confusing as there are so many options, I hear terms like lossless, variable bitrate among others and it's a bit intimidating.
I have never been very concerned with sound quality until recently when something seem to click and now I am more interested in fewer songs at better sound quality as opposed to the other way around.
No reason to have 2000 songs at good quality when you can have say.. 1200at great quality, you probably won't listen to them all on a portable device anyway.
As for my main question I was assuming that songs would be more flexible when stored at MP3 as opposed to WMA but that may have been in the past, perhaps now it does not make much of a difference !!! When knowing about the loss in quality because of a transfer it does seem like a pointless operation.
The good point is that I do have all the original CD's (of which some were ripped from MP3's) so can always spend some time and re-rip if needed.
Cheers again everyone, LL-

 

[mADmAN]

dBPowerAmp Music Converter.

u can mass convert files... all files will be converted into the same format and same bitrate (whichever one u choose of course).

but i dunno if it can handle up to 2000 files at once though... ive only tried an entire album of about 20 songs max.

 

[facelvega]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lamplighter /img/forum/go_quote.gif The whole thing is kind of confusing as there are so many options, I hear terms like lossless, variable bitrate among others and it's a bit intimidating. I have never been very concerned with sound quality until recently when something seem to click and now I am more interested in fewer songs at better sound quality as opposed to the other way around. No reason to have 2000 songs at good quality when you can have say.. 1200at great quality, you probably won't listen to them all on a portable device anyway. As for my main question I was assuming that songs would be more flexible when stored at MP3 as opposed to WMA but that may have been in the past, perhaps now it does not make much of a difference !!! When knowing about the loss in quality because of a transfer it does seem like a pointless operation. The good point is that I do have all the original CD's (of which some were ripped from MP3's) so can always spend some time and re-rip if needed. Cheers again everyone, LL-

lossless: i.e., lossless compared to cd resolution. Either the same files as on the cd, or a compression method from which these files can be reproduced bit by bit while playing (like APE,or FLAC)

lossy: file types like mp3 or wma don't use all the data of the cd, they sample it at varying rates of precision and save this sampled data in a compressed form. By using them you lose some of the data and some of the sound quality of the original file. For instance, with good headphones and a decent source, most people can easily tell the difference between a wma at 128kbps and an mp3 at 192kbps vbr. On an mp3 player with cheapish portable headphones, the difference would be harder to hear.

conversion: since mp3 and wma use different methods of compressing the data of a cd file, it's particulary dangerous to switch from one to the other. It's kind of like making a photocopy of a photocopy, whereas lossless is more like a print from a photo negative.

variable bitrate: rather than sample the cd file at a constant bitrate, VBR uses a higher rate for complicated passages and a lower one for simple parts like the silence between tracks or when only one instrument is playing, say. The advantage is to get the sound quality of a high-bitrate file in a smaller file size.

The problem you're running into now is that your files are ripped to such a low bitrate that if you get good headphones, you'll likely want to make all new files with better resolution-- assuming you have the original cds. A pain? Oh yes. But most everyone here will tell you it's worth it. I'd start with the stuff you love the most, and the stuff with the best original recordings. Good luck,

FV

 

[craiglester]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mADmAN /img/forum/go_quote.gif dBPowerAmp Music Converter. u can mass convert files... all files will be converted into the same format and same bitrate (whichever one u choose of course). but i dunno if it can handle up to 2000 files at once though... ive only tried an entire album of about 20 songs max.

it can. theres a batch convert option on it now. I couldn't tell you exactly how to do ir right now as it's not on this work pc. but it does work.

I did something like 5000 flacs to mp for my car dap overnight. (processor was toasty warm when it finished though)