I've configured cdex to rip flac from cds but cannot find a way to make cdex convert the flac onto mp3's.

I tried going to 'Convert compressed files' but the flac files wont show up in the dialogue for me to convert them.

Is there a simple way for me to do this please? Or even another Windows program that will use the flac and the lame encoders? Thanks.

Makes you wonder, how many times can we say 'try foobar'?

But then I wonder how clearly I can state that I want to use cdex. People say, if you're using cdex to rip flac why not then use it convert flac to mp3. But nobody says how. I didn't particularly want to use one program for one thing and another to continue the process. And the concensus is that cdex is by far the best. Or is it just that the lame encoder is.....

Oh I give up. Thanks anyway. I'll just use Windows Media Player (just to annoy you!)

On Windows most people will agree that EAC is probably the best app for ripping since it's secure. foobar2000 is certainly at the top of the pack for transcoding purposes, but is by no means the only choice. dbPowerAmp and Multi-Frontend are two other free ones that come to mind off the top of my head. Really, there are probably a lot of programs available for doing this. Not sure if CDEX is one of them though since I don't use it. You may want to go over to their forums and ask there for support.

http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/boards/index.php?c=2

Edit: frontah is another good one for transcoding (was trying to remember it while I was writing this post but couldn't at the time).

I always thought the general concensus was EAC + <encoder> = success!

I don't have much expertise with CDex, but if you used EAC you could use it in conjunction with MAREO to encode to both FLAC and MP3.

www.dbpoweramp.com

This was going to be my suggestion, except I was going to ask if it was possible to use a program like MAREO or Flacattack with CDex.

hahahahaha. I love you.

Using WIMP is more likely to annoy you than us

Absolutely!! That's why I'm here.
Tis difficult tho - I'll roll up my sleeves with the best of you on php, html, sql - but I just wanted a simple program without the hours of learning for my music. I downloaded foobar (like I was told at the beginning) and it was a whole new learning curve. I just couldn't be bothered. Now I'll try some of the others.

I'll try EAC - and apologies to tev777!

I don't think EAC has the ability to convert from FLAC to MP3, only from WAV.

No nedd to apologize to me. When I first found HA I was using BonkEnc and MP3 @ 128 CBR with whatever encoder was the default. (That's not a shot at the BonkEnc dev. Thanks for getting me started.) I knew nothing about nothing and some might say I know just as much now.

Some of the progams I use now took some time to figure out, but it is worth it to have a setup that you are happy with. Once everything is set up correctly EAC, foobar and all of the others are just as easy to use as WMP, but it will do what you want instead of what someone else thought you would want.

You could try MAREO or WACK for that purpose, these two will rip the CD into several formats. Easy to use, tho...

I have sympathy with anyone trying to convert FLAC audio files to MP3 - especially if they want to use the LAME MP3 encoder using their own settings and don't want to pay for the privilage.

Luckily I (eventually) found a solution in the form of a nice piece of free software called "Frontah".

I've written a short article explaining more. You can find it at:
http://www.philsaunders.com/convert_flac_to_mp3/

Why? That is easily achieved using foobar2000 with it's excellent CLI-encoder.

CDex:

Change the encoder in settings from FLAC to Lame MP3 (or external encoder, supplying a later version than the one in CDex), then go to Convert | Re-encode Compressed Audio File(s)

Then change settings back to FLAC.

I use CDex too.. And this is what I do.

CDex -> WAV
WAV -> FLAC Frontend -> Compression level 8 (meh, I don't mind waiting) -> Encode
WAV -> CDex -> Encode (You can do normalize, then encode as well)

Go in CDex's option, change encoder to LAME. USE LAME FFS!

Is there anything easier than converting FLAC to MP3? Frontah is indeed very good for this. Drag, drop, click. Foobar2000, dBPowerAmp, MultiFrontend, etc. all do this very easily.

you can use MAREO + CDex (or EAC, or Audiograbber, or Others) to do:

CD -> MP3 & FLAC (& NORMALIZE) all at the same time.

edit: but if you already have your FLACs, foobar2000 or dbpoweramp are the easiest choices.

I'm probably pointing out the obvious, but why aren't you ripping in MP3 if you want mp3 and not flac?

There's also MediaCoder floating around here. I've checked it out and it seems solid with support for everything under the sun.

edit: Heck, here's the link.
http://www.rarewares.org/mediacoder/download.htm

I'm sure this has been hashed out, but do you lose sound quality encoding from flac or ape --> mp3 verses wav --> mp3

I'm trying to figure the fastest and best way to rip a collection into a lossless format and mp3 format for portables.

Would this method be as good as any:

EAC --> flac or ape,

then flac or ape --> mp3 v4 new using Foobar 2000

Also is is possible to rip from EAC and batch both flac (or ape) and mp3 into seperate directories off one wave file for each song making the above into a single step process once ripped? (did that make sense?)

Thanks

you should use the search function. Lossless is that, no loss of quality, so there is no diference between WAV -> MP3 and CD -> MP3. MAREO is meant to do multiple encodings at once.

Thanks. I knew Flac is lossless but Flac plays at a lower kbps than a wave file, so I wasn't sure about converting to mp3.

The problem with dBPowerAmp is you have to pay for MP3 encoding with LAME and you can't pass commandline parameters. Same with CDEX by the looks of those screenshots. I've never tried foobar - downloaded it once - took one look at it (ugly) and deleted it (shallow I know).

Frontah is a great solution.

I have some comments on dBpowerAmp.

I am just starting to rip my 1200+ CD collection to flac for archival. I wanted a tool which allows me to easily select some subset of the archived files and transcode them (OGG/MP3) to another location (read one or more digital audio players) while maintaining the Artist/Recording/Song folder/file structure in which they are archived. dBpowerAMP has an excellent Music Selector function which allows you to select ("check") multiple parts of a directory hierarchy (folders/subfolders/songs) and then click to open a window to select the encoding options. You can choose to place the new files in the same location as the originals, or to maintiain the folder structure in a new location. I find this to be an incredibly useful and very usable (simple) function, and well worth the $14 registration fee for MP3 encoding.

Given all the foobar 2000 praise I will have to investigate to determine is that software provides the same functionality.

How about WinLame?

CDex does allow the option of using an external encoder, so you can use external lame and pass to it commandline parameters.

For FLAC->MP3, I use Speek's "Multi Frontend". It doesn't get any easier than that. Once you've got it installed and set up, it's as easy as dragging your FLAC files into it and clicking "Go".

You can pass commandline arguments with the Lame CLI or the generic CLI encoder of DBPowerAmp. You can use a more recent version of Lame this way, too.