I have converted all of my CD's to WMA files instead of MP3's before downloading them onto my player as it uses just about 1/2 the space to do so. I do have, howver, many MP3's still remaining on my drive that would save me a lot more space if they were WMA's as well.

As such, does anybody know of a program that will convert from MP3's to WMA files without having to convert the MP3's frist to WAV files to do so?

Thanks,

Ed

As such, does anybody know of a program that will convert from MP3's to WMA files without having to convert the MP3's frist to WAV files to do so?

Remember that even if you find a program that does this in one step, it's still converting to WAV "under the hood" as part of the transcoding process.

Please make sure to read this before doing any transcoding.

And also there's a problem with the basic philosophy you're using: Which is that you're trying to save space rather than go for the highest quality. It's easy and quick to increase the storage capacity on your player, but it's a really big PITA to re-encode your whole collection once you start noticing that it sounds like crap at those low bit rates.

I use a program called "Easy CD-DA Extractor" which has an option in the tools menu for file conversion. It will easily convert any mp3 file to WMA. It is made by Poikosoft and can usually be downloaded from the net.

Of course, you're converting these files. So you're basically converting the MP3 to WAV, which doesn't do any harm, but then you're converting it to WMA, which is compressing it. So all the tunes you made into MP3s are gonna sound a bit worse than the rest you just made WMA's out of to begin with.

I agree with Tony, but even if you're main concern is capacity, I'd still recommend re-ripping those songs and encoding them in WMA to begin with. One compression is always better than two.

Haha, but what about the songs he downloaded off the Net???

Then, unless he wants files that have been compressed twice (with the added loss in sound quality), he's SOL.

Well, as I am listening to the music in my noisy Miata sound quality, unless it is absolutely horrible, should not be compromised all that much by expanding and compressing once again!

Thanks for the input!

Haha, but what about the songs he downloaded off the Net???

Well he didn't say that, now did he? I was speaking with the assumption that some files might have been ripped at earlier dates or something. If he downloaded them off the net, then he should disregard my post.

Then again, if he downloaded them, chances are that the tracks were horribly ripped in the first place, also making the quality issue in my post irrelevant.

Not true! Like I said, listening to the tracks in my tiny Miata with all the road noise does not lend itself to a reference listening environment. All of the tracks that I have ripped from CD's have been done in WMA format and are absolutely fine to listen to. It is the downloaded tacks that I want to re-convert into WMA in order to free up some drive space. Finally, I will never know of sound deteriation until I actually do it, speculation on the process notwithstanding!!!

Thanks again for all your help!