I'm looking for a CD burning tool for burning mp3 CDs from files that are in a variety of formats (mp3, ogg, mpc, flac). The program should be able to transcode the files that are not mp3s to mp3 (ideally using lame and giving commandline options). Is there any program that does this (Nero can now write audio CDs from a variety of formats, but as far as i can tell it doesn't seem to be able to do this in an automated way even though it can encode to mp3. Would this be possible using a Nero plugin?

The transcoded tracks would probably have to be created and stored in a temp location before burning as CPUs won't be able to encode to mp3 on the fly at 48x (shame...).

Suggestions would be much appreciated, thanks.

Edit: Ideally, it would be possible to encode to formats other than mp3: I have an expanium, so aac CDs would be nice...if the file is mp3 or aac, leave it; if the file is not mp3 or aac, then transcode to aac.

dBpowerAMP CD Writer will work just as you described, infact everything you described

Thanks for that quick reply. That's pretty much exactly what I was looking for....very nice program, well done!

The only thing I can't seem to figure out is how to do the bit I had in the edit to my post: getting it to not re-encode mp3's or aac's, but re-encode everything else to aac? As far as I can tell, I can either get everything to mp3 or everything to aac. Never mind though, I'll just use mp3 CDs, they'll do just fine.

Also, what option in lame will be the fastest? I'm looking at going for bitrates around 160ish mp3. At the moment I'm going for alt preset ABR 160. Quality isn't too much of a concern (as this isn't for archival, just for portable use) within reason, but any extra bit of speed would be nice. At the moment I'm getting about 8-9x on an Athlon XP2000+, does that sound about right?

You could try --alt-preset fast standard -Y

That would result in ~160kbps and encode much faster than --alt-preset standard, while maintaining pretty much exactly the same quality (I know you said that didn't matter, but it doesn't hurt, right?)

My guess is that it won't be any faster than the ABR you are using, but it'll sound better at similar bitrates.

Ah right...not quite everything. Here is my master plan! soon I am updating Sveta Portable Audio to include 'Smart Conversions' this is needed so if you say for example sycronize an iPod with a large music collection to minimize the conversions. Shortly after that I will xfer the code to the CD writer also, so you can set up:

keep any mp3 with a bitrate below X
keep any mp4 with a bitrate below X

convert anything else to mp4.

Excellent, thank you very much spoon. I realise this is a fairly unusual feature request, but quite useful for me nontheless.

Also, could there possibly be an option to store the transcoded tracks in memory rather than on hard disk if space runs out on HD, but there's loads of free memory? Just an idea...might be a pain to do though.

Until you add that feature, mp3 CDs will do me just fine though, ta.

Edit: just remembered...is there any chance of being able to use --alt-preset medium? IIRC this setting should be quite good for portables at mid bitrates...

I don't think I have access to those Lame switches through the Lame_enc.dll, anyhow you can install the 'Generic CLI Compressor':

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-ge...generic-cli.htm

and pass what ever commandline into lame you fancy (don't bother with tags as they are handled automatically).