Anyone Know of an Mp3 Converter?

I recently recieved an MP3 player as a gift and alot of the songs i would like are in .wma format and my MP3 player for somereason cannot read .wma's. Ive been searching for a long time (months) for an MP3 converter that is 1) Free and 2) works lol. It would be a MAJOR miracle if you guys could spend some time and try to find out for me. I've given up hope. My teacher came across this site looking for Kazaalite and shared it with the class so i figured i could check here and have some hope. If you can't find one its no biggy, but if you have any references or any clue about any, your help would be much appreciated..


Thanks
LieutenantDan

[locustfurnace]

Mp3 & wma are not the same, they both are compressed formats, just different. So a portable mp3 will play just mp3's. If the player included a decoder for wma, then it would play it. Just dont expect it to.
The problem with what you want to do is that the quality of mp3's are not that great to begin with. So you will be re-encoding a second time. Since each format is lossy, which means data is lost during the compression stage, you will be doubling the amount of degrading audio.
I am not aware of any transcoders for wma -> mp3, so you will not benefit by the advancements of transcoding, unless someone else knows one for wma->mp3.
The only encoder you will want will be the lame mp3 encoder, it is a free encoder, based on the mpeg 1 layer 3 ISO. Other encoders can cost you money.
Some hardware decoders follow the ISO specifications very strictly, so you will want to make sure when you encode, if the songs do not play, then you may want to be sure to use padding for ISO compliance.
This is something lame can also do. Though not sure what hardware decoders are that picky.
I'd suggest you try using dBpowerAmp Converter, make sure you also download the appropriate codec's, available on the same site under codec central.
This program will convert your wma to mp3. This means it will take the mp3 file, decode it to wav and then re encode it to mp3.
Just another note, Mp3Pro is not the same as Mp3. Most portable players will not be able to handle this format.
Mp3 is "Mpeg 1 layer 3" and Mp3Pro is "Mpeg 2 layer 3"

If the wma files are proteced by Digital Rights Management (DRM) no software, including dbpoweramp music converter, will be able to transcode/convert them.

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by guest_Tom@Mar 12 2004, 01:06 PM
If the wma files are proteced by Digital Rights Management (DRM) no software, including dbpoweramp music converter, will be able to transcode/convert them.

True, but that does not mean you cant force the source into an mp3.
Since the wma is already in lower quality, if one really wants the song, all you need to do is play the song in whatever player you like, and press record on the built in Windows sound recorder, or something better such as Audacity, CoolEdit, and then save it as an mp3.
The DRM just makes converting the song a 2-step process.

tis true but I think that we should convince Lieutenantdan to use another format instead

This one is a cd ripper as well:

http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

Unfortunately it is not a converter. I am a great fan of Audiograbber despite a lack of secure or paranoia mode and it is great to see it as now freeware.

On another note I must register someday....

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by TheBulbasaurfreak+Mar 12 2004, 03:10 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (TheBulbasaurfreak @ Mar 12 2004, 03:10 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>This one is a cd ripper as well: http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/[/b]

Ripping is not what the user is asking about, they want a program to do format conversions.

<!--QuoteBegin--guest_Tom@Mar 12 2004, 01:55 PM
tis true but I think that we should convince Lieutenantdan to use another format instead [/quote]
Yes, but as you are well aware of; which you also noted in a previous posting, there is not many harware devices which support anything other than mp3. Which is what this poster is wanting. Since their hardware device does not decode wma. I'd really not suggest anyone ever use wma, or wmv for that matter. As the video format lacks the smooth scrubbing/seeking ability one can do with mpeg encoded videos. I recently read that windows media will be included in the newest DVD format, HD_DVD, or whatever that have abbreviated it from.

It has a kind of converter. But locustfurnace will point you to some programs.

d8power Amp Converter

I'm really not the much of a techie . . . but I kinda get your problem ; but I could just think I understand when I really don't... ummm :blink: . The above URL should take you directly to dBpowerAmp Music Converter 10.0. Here is the publishers description :

Publisher's Description
Often called the Swiss Army knife of audio, dMC can digitally rip sound from audio CDs to a multitude of formats. Convert from one format to another while preserving ID tags. Nearly every audio type is supported, including MP3, MP4, Windows Media Audio (WMA), OGG Vorbis, AAC, Monkey's Audio, and FLAC (with optional installs from Codec Central). For Windows Explorer integration, right-click Convert To to pop up useful information on audio files (such as bit rate and length). Record from LPs with an optional Auxiliary Input install.

I hope I was aleast in the right ball park and it helps you.