Hi all.

First off, let me state, I am far from an audiophile. I love music, but I'm not sure I'd be able to notice a huge difference between a file encoded at 128 AAC or 320 MP3.

Anyway, I've read through many threads on this forum and have gotten the impression many of you take your sound quality quite seriously. I started this thread because I wasn't able to find an answer to some of my questions.

A little background:
I have about 15GB of digital music. I recently converted my MP3 collection to WMA Pro at 192 (no DRM protection). Why? I have no idea. I'm a bit OCD and it seemed like a time consuming project (ie...loads of fun). Anyway, I also kept my MP3 files because my PC is on a network with my girlfriend and her portable music player doesn't recognize WMA Pro.

I play my music (I mostly play the WMA's considering how much time I spent converting to them--I know, I know...stupid) on my PC using Winamp and on my Zune 80GB. My gf has a 2GB Sansa Clip, which basically, only supports MP3s (up to 320kbps) and WMAs up to 192kbps (not Pro).

The MP3 files I have range from 128kbps -320.

I have a 400 GB HD so I'm not running short on space by keeping two separate 15GB music folders. However, I don't want to continue maintaining two separate collections.


Here are some questions I hope you guys and gals can help me with. Keep in mind, I'm really only looking for basic answers, as I'm not really concerned with the technicalities of this particular subject.

1) What is the best and fastest program to convert my WMA Pro files to MP3s encoded at 192kbps (using the LAME codecs)?

2) Will there be MAJOR damage done to the sound quality by converting from WMA P to MP3?

3) Is it possible (and practical) to convert an MP3 at 128kbps to 192kbps?


Thank you for taking the time to read through this. All help is greatly appreciated.

You just reduced the quality of your files for no good reason.

Are you planning to convert them back? You are going to lose even more resolution.

It is possible. But why? You are going to lose quality AND space!

Keep your MP3s and delete your WMAs for the sake of sanity.

Agreed

Or

Read the Lame Wiki for future ripping or if you want to start a new project read the wiki and Rerip your cd's to Lossless and mp3 (since you have plenty of room). For lossless I would use FLAC at -5 and for mp3 well read the wiki. That should keep you busy for a while

I suggest you go back and re-rip all your CD's to lossless. Rip them to either FLAC, WavPack, Apple Lossless, or something. Don't use WMA Lossless as to my knowledge, you can only use Windows Media Player to rip to that format and Windows Media Player cannot accurately rip audio CD's. If you are going to go through the trouble of re-ripping then you should do it right and accurately. Both EAC and dbpoweramp are very accurate when it comes to CD ripping. I have heard that foobar2000 can be pretty accurate as well but I don't think it has the error correction methods that EAC and dbpoweramp have.

Going lossless means that you only ever have to rip once. After that, you can trancode to all the lossless and lossy formats that you like. Just a little FYI - the Zune is not compatible with WMA Pro files, at least according to cnet.com and the Zune's official website. So chances are high that the audio on your Zune is transcoded from your WMA Pro files. The Zune's software can play WMA Pro files just fine, the Zune itself won't work with WMA Pro files. So you are much better off just deleting your WMA Pro files and going with mp3 since the only thing that accurately plays your WMA Pro files is your computer.

I really hope the the OP understands that every time he re-encodes his lossy audio that he losses more quality. Somehow I don't think he's really grasped that yet.