Great freeware mp3 converter

catalina66

Hi

Was going to tag this on to the end of another thread, but thought it was worth just posting the link itself (I'm not affiliated or anything!), especially as another programme I recently recommended, thinking it was freeware, timed out yesterday! This one just involves the sending of a key after doing the free download, to unlock being able to use it freely as an mp3 converter etc (rather than the restriction of only being able to grab 5 files) ... lots of other functions and formats, not all of which are unlocked by the key, but enough to freely e.g. convert files to mp3 etc.

http://mp3-player.audio4fun.com/mp3-music-editor.htm

Cat

barrymoney

Hi -- I used musicmatch ( http://www.musicmatch.com/ ) for ripping my CDs to mp3, but its been ages since I checked it out. Looks like its still free (bought out by Yahoo?). You are right, theres lots of sneaky 'not really free' software out there.

catalina66

barrymoney wrote:

Hi -- I used musicmatch ( http://www.musicmatch.com/ ) for ripping my CDs to mp3, but its been ages since I checked it out. Looks like its still free (bought out by Yahoo?). You are right, theres lots of sneaky 'not really free' software out there.

Hi, Musicmatch looks good, and it looks like the basic one is still free ... always a bonus! Yes, I'd been certain the program I'd recommended previously was freeware but yesterday it ground to a halt. Definitely too many sneaky ones out there!

TJJamal

I would personally recommend the Windows Media Player, the Ripping functionality allows the user to rip files from CD and then convert them in to MP3 format, which is great.

WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER DOES NOT ALLOW YOU TO CONVERT FILES FROM ONE FORMAT TO ANOTHER.


Thanks all

f1charlie

I'm no expert, but I've tried a few out when ripping CDs for my daughter's MP3 player, and Audiograbber seems as good as any - straightforward to use, but with plenty of options for those who want to fiddle (although I haven't investigated what they all do!).

See here:
http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

Charlie

ollyshaw

I always use lame,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME

Lame will encode very high quality mp3's and is open source (free)

CDex is a very handy tool for using lame.

Olly

wolfman

Yeah, for encoding Mp3's you can't be Lame.

Look for version 3.97b, it's the current recommended version. Cdex or EAC (it's more advanced but probably the best ripper around) are good to use in combination with Lame.

Or maybe have a look at Ogg Vorbis when encoding. It's completely free (open source, and no royalties) and produces better results than Mp3. Very similar to AAC but developed by the community. I personally now encode all my music into Ogg format.

nickmack

f1charlie wrote:

I'm no expert, but I've tried a few out when ripping CDs for my daughter's MP3 player, and Audiograbber seems as good as any - straightforward to use, but with plenty of options for those who want to fiddle (although I haven't investigated what they all do!).

See here:
http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

Charlie

As both ollyshaw and wolfman said, use LAME.

There's a DLL plugin for Audiograbber. Just put the lame_enc.dll file from the downloads into your Audiograbber directory and it will appear as an extra encoder option.