Ableton Forum

Hi. I searched the site, couldn't find anything, and remembered the site search is worthless, so I'll ask the pros: What's the best quick and easy wav. to mp3 converter available?

Thanks,

itunes can convert whatever to whatever....why is the search on this site worthless--how could it be any better?

itunes is not free.. you can use audacity:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

If you need better search capabilities, you can use google to search this site:

go to google and type in:

site:www.ableton.com "whatever whatever"

stinky wrote:itunes is not free...

in what communist country is itunes not free??? It is totally free...ipods are not free.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

you're right, my mistake.. i was thinking because it's tied to the ipod and itunes music store, but i don't/wouldn't use it.. sorry.

Sorry to start a flamefest.... Thank you for your suggestions. I've used both iTunes and Audacity, and I don't quite know how I felt about Audacity. Free is good, so I guess it's hard to complain. Perhaps there's been an update since I last gave it a chance. I've used iTunes, and it's fine, although I'm reluctant to use an Apple product (personal choice. No offense to all of the wonderful mac users out there). I'll give both a try, find out what'll fit my workflow best for this project.

PS- How'd I miss that about Google?! I guess I never passed browsing 101 in Interweb school. Thanks for the tip!

LAME codec + RazorLAME GUI

Seconding iTunes.
It's very easy to use.

itunes does a rather good job, since version4 the ex-emagic team is involved to have introduced some of the "logic soundengine" technologies... it's pretty darn good, though.

i second that as probably the best choice when it comes to "free of charge"

Audiograpper is good and free.

Hi

I had the same problem (finding a free mp3 coder which obtains quality encoding).

I found Lamexp, which as the name suggest uses lame.

It is totally freeware and has no limitations or nag messages.

Variable quality settings / encoding options which You can adjust.

For freeware, maximum quality is actually stunning. I got a wav file totalling something like 1156kbps (just for example) down to mp3 - 320kbps (stereo @ 48khz) perfectly. You can't tell the difference.

Cheers.

I use itunes... audacity does indeed have that wonderful £0 price tag... but it's a bit unreliable. I think it's a good program but needs tweaking/bug fixing (remind you of any other programs?). I stopped using it about 6 months ago so maybe I should check for updates before I comment. But itunes does the job for me. Also with a £0 price tag.

My 2p.

FWIW, I use Audacity all the time & have never found it to be unreliable. The only time I remember having problems was crashing when mixing multiple files of different sample rates - but that is no small feat for any program, and by re-sampling the files everything worked fine.

For converting files to MP3, though, it's great - plus you have the option to convert to Ogg, or MP3->WAV, which iTunes isn't going to do.

Another option is dBpowerAMP - it can do batch conversions between tons of formats. You can grab it free, although it says that mp3 is licensed for 30 days (I'm pretty sure that's 30 days of actual use - I just tried a copy I've had for a long time & it worked fine). Registration is only $14, though, so it's certainly reasonably priced.

Well, CDex works great. It's more of a CD ripper, but it's very flexible iin how you choose to use it. And it's free.

And for those working in the radio broadcast industry, it can convert to .mp2 which very few apps will do.

CP

http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html
the command line itself is quite easy to use.