Hi All-

Whats the best way to rip songs into mp3?  i thought i could do that with windows media player but it only does wma.  are there any good free programs that i can use to do this?

THANKS!
Wabbitt

I used to recommend Musicmatch to n00bs, but I think iTunes has a leg up on it. It’s not the memory pig MMJB is. Both are pretty good in their own way.

My friends all use Window Media and rip them to .wma because it rips the cover art as well. Then they get a batch .wma to .mp3 and re-encode them. It’s an extra step but they want the cover art and all the correct details.

Erik

this is all great info….thank you.  do you know what batch converter is good and free or good and minimal cost?

doesnt itunes use aac or something like that?

THANKS!

you can un realone player, it does mp3 directly and it’s free.

use iTunes, it does AAC and MP3. (i’d take AAC over MP3 anyday though)

Most converters that can handle MP3 and WMA are going to cost you due to licensing fees for both the WMA and MP3 formats.

I use CDEX it is free and very easy to use.

http://www.cdex.n3.net/

True…I am not sure which ones they use, but they swear by it for the cover art

I personally don’t rip CDs…

Erik

I use iTunes, it’s free, fast, and works with my iPod. I also like not having to pay Microsoft for the mp3 ripping codec pack. If you’re going to rip to wma and convert it to mp3, you will lose some audio quality in the process, transcoding always does that. Just rip directly to the format you’re going to use.

I agree with dakotqa Cdex is a good free program. Musicmatch, windows media player etc will only convert iwth ad ons that you have to pay for. I didn’t know that you can get i tunes for free?
I have an in car mp3 player, it has a 30gb hard drive and to add new albums i just plug the removable hard drive into my pc via usb and my pc sees it as an extra drive. Cdex is perfect for converting any album to mp3 for it.

thanks for all the awesome info!!!!!!!!!!!

i actually dl the cdex and installed it but it gave me some freaky errors.  i think i will stick with itunes.

thanks
wabbitt

how do i convert wma to mp3 with itunes?  i cant figure it out?

THANKS!

how do i convert wma to mp3 with itunes?  i cant figure it out?

THANKS!

I doubt you can…

iTunes uses aac a totally different format.

Erik

how do i convert wma to mp3 with itunes?  i cant figure it out?

THANKS!

iTunes rips to mp3 or AAC (your choice), but to take your already-made wma files and convert them to mp3, you need to use another program. Any new songs you rip from CDs will be in mp3 format though.

Try this freeware conversion program (the beta version):

http://www.nesoft.org/index.shtml