Converting wma to mp3

[dreams]

Im trying to convert wma to mp3, or maybe even ogg. How do I tell which compression to use considering they are completely different. Should I just convert to wav, then to mp3?

[Rickio]

Best way to know is to convert to both and listen. Just pick a music file with a wide range of sounds and do a experiment.
I think it's up to your ears. They are both comparable and it really depends on the bitrate you choose.
I don't think mp3 is going to disappear and ogg is up and coming. I think ogg will be very popular.

[dreams]

Yea, I have been encoding all my cds into ogg format 500 kbps so they start to spread through the networks.

[123_kid]

you should consider using mpc. it's transparent to nearly everybody at around 200 kbs.

[anorlu]

Advanced WMA workshop can do that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.litexmedia.com/

[anorlu]

or look at :

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

[123_kid]

OR you could go to this page and get an alternate wma plugin for winamp. http://www.inf.ufpr.br/~rja00/others.html . it's relatively slow but it's pretty sweet. just getting this instead of downloading a whole different program just for converting wma to mp3 sounds better to me, but that's just me.

[LukaBuka]

Advanced WMA workshop can do that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.litexmedia.com/

... and it does it better than other software I tried. A bit expensive, but nothing that Deprice, Froogle, PriceGrabber or Shopping.Com can't cure
that's where I got it at 15% off
http://www.deprice.com/advancedwmaworkshop.htm
Look at eBay too

[Auggie2k]

Oh god, definately go for dBpowerAMP...

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

Endless list of codecs, tag editor and just pure ease of use. See for yourself!

[Rajarius]

Uhh... don't convert to anything. Transcoding isn't the thing to do.

Using 500 kbits is a waste of space with a lossy compression mechanism. You probably can't hear the difference past a certain point way lower than that anyway. What you really want in this case is lossless, like WAVpack or FLAC.

Also, to be complete, MPC becomes transparent to most people at bitrates much lower than 200 kbps. More like 160.