WMA to MP3 conversions

BardSkye said:

I have a fair amount of books and music on cassette tape that I now have to convert to cd. My little old Walkman's phone jack died and it's too old to get parts anymore. Much of the music is too old/obscure to be available on cd, including some from my first band.

I can play the cassettes on the home system and record them onto my voice recorder, then from there onto the computer, but in order to play them at work they would have to be converted from the recorder's WMA files to MP3 files, then put on cds.

Anyone used Kyote's freeware? It sounds good, but I'm wary of freeware's reputation for sending along viruses as well as programs. I don't mind paying for a program if I can get one recommended.

Click to expand...

For this kind of capture I recommend Audacity. We've been using it for a few years now and have had no virus issues. It's so easy even my kids (9 and 13) use it.

BardSkye said:

I can play the cassettes on the home system and record them onto my voice recorder, then from there onto the computer, but in order to play them at work they would have to be converted from the recorder's WMA files to MP3 files, then put on cds.

Click to expand...

You shouldn't need the voice recorder stage. You should be able to get a Stereo Plug to RCA Phono socket adapter and then plus your tape deck straight into your PC's soundcard. Audacity can do the recording.

I thought Windows Media Player could convert WMA to mp3 ??

Firstly, what you were describing may work, but it's indeed the long wat around, and you do NOT want to convert from WMA to mp3 unless you really NEED mp3 directly, such as for a portable mp3 player. I recall that WMA is a lossy formt itself, and going from one such format to another (mp3) adds extra wonkiness to the sound (and I know you've heard bad mp3's that sound like they're under water).

BardSkye said:

Sorry it's taken so long to reply; I've been at work.

I'm not what I would consider computer literate. Will a computer running XP accept straight sound and turn it into files?

Click to expand...

Yes, with the right software. There's lots of "right sofware" for any computer and OS thesedays.

BardSkye said:

I haven't seen anything on my "save as" dropdown menu that allows it. But then, I'm supposed to be able to re-record on my rewriteable cds as well but it doesn't happen on my computer. That one shows up on the dropdown menu, but is greyed out no matter what I do.

Click to expand...

You have to erase and/or reformat rewritable CD's CD-RW's, and I forget how to do it. I've only done it once or twice and it was ten years ago. I decided back then CD-R's were cheap enough.

BardSkye said:

I really don't mind doing it the hard way. It just has to wait for a bit until I have a couple of weekdays off.

Click to expand...

You want to find "The Easy Way" that will, not coincidentally, also give the best sound quality.

Get that dual-RCA to 1/8" stereo mini jack cable as someone else said. Radio Shack should still have it (they had it 12 years ago). Put the RCA ends into the tape out of your stereo. Put the other end into your computer's "Line Input" (NOT the Mic In) and record using Audacity (there's versions for PC/Windows, Mac and Linux) or similar audio recording software. Save the file as .wav (or in Audacity, export it as .wav). Use the .wav as the file you use to make the CD-R.

Without going into the specifics of whatever program you use, that's about it.

Most free software sites such as http://download.com are good about not having viruses in the programs, though some "shareware" programs are begware/nagware and almost like viruses themselves. But it's usually better to get the program from the creator's or author's site, as that has the latest version.

Here's Audacity - it's overkill for this, but it works:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Personally, I don't like audacity. And if you want to convert files en mass, I would use what I always use: http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ . Dbamp converts anything to anything, FLAC, AAC, you name it. I love it because instead of need a dozen programs, this baby does it all. You can convert tons of folders all at once instead of having to go through and pick n choose, it has a user interface with easy drop-menus where you can just check off whatever you want. I've never found a converter better than this.