FLAC to WMA VBR transcoding...?

esuhl

I have an archive of audio recordings in FLAC format on my main PC. Sometimes I want to listen to them on my portable audio player, which only has 1GB memory, so I'd like to convert them into WMA variable-bit-rate (VBR) files for listening on-the-go.

Are there any good, simple (e.g. drag & drop) and free (!) FLAC to WMA VBR converters? I've searched but can't find anything at all...

welshee

posted in error

Ximian

These might do the job:

Audiocoder: http://www.mediacoderhq.com/audio/
Formatfactory: http://www.pcfreetime.com/
FreeRip: http://www.freerip.com/

-TangleFoot-

This looks like a good place to start.

Ximian

bat999 wrote: »

You've tested them?
Or just guessing.:cool:

Partially guessing. I've used FormatFactory to convert to mp3 but not wma, the other software apps I listed claim to be able to convert to wma. Try 'em and let us know how it worked out.

-TangleFoot-

Hmm... would one of Microsoft's own tools suffice?

• Microsoft Expression Encoder
• Xiph.org DirectShow Filters

Alternatively, why not convert to MP3 instead?

esuhl

Ximian wrote: »

These might do the job:

Audiocoder: http://www.mediacoderhq.com/audio/
Formatfactory: http://www.pcfreetime.com/
FreeRip: http://www.freerip.com/

Cheers for the suggestion. Audiocoder seems to be the only one that should do it (the others only encode CBR files)... but it's so buggy it crashes every time I run it...

-TangleFoot- wrote: »

This looks like a good place to start.

That's just the FLAC frontend, isn't it? I don't think there's any way to get it to encode WMA VBR files...

-TangleFoot- wrote: »

Hmm... would one of Microsoft's own tools suffice?

• Microsoft Expression Encoder
• Xiph.org DirectShow Filters

Sadly the first won't recognise FLAC files and DirectShow is an API so I guess I'd have to write the transcoding app myself using the API and codecs... Hmmm...

-TangleFoot- wrote: »

Alternatively, why not convert to MP3 instead?

I really wanted to use WMA as I did a fair bit of testing a few years ago and found that WMA files sounded much better to my ears than MP3s... but I'm beginning to think that might be the easiest solution! Unless I can somehow use Directshow or otherwise get command-line FLAC-to-WAV and WAV-to-WMA transcoders and cobble them together in Visual Basic...

Anyway, thanks for all the tips & suggestions... I'll have another quick web search and if I can't find anything I'll either try MP3s or mayyyybe have a go at writing my own transcoder...

Ximian

I haven't used Winamp for ages .... but ... if you load the flac file in Winamp, then right click and select "send to" and then select the option "Format converter" you can select the output to be wma (CBR and VBR are both supported)

Blackjack_Davy

The trouble with WMA is that its a closed codec, it's proprietary Microsoft. Therefore most 3rd parties simply aren't interested in paying a licence to M$.

If you're looking for a reliable FLAC > MP3 transcoder recommend LameXP

-TangleFoot-

esuhl wrote: »

Sadly the first won't recognise FLAC files...

I was hoping the second would allow it to do so.

More things:

• WinFF
• Flac2Wma (.NET; WMA Lossless)
• Wikipedia

StuHolmes

It's probably a bit more than you're looking for but I use MediaMonkey to manage my music library and it can be set to automatically re-encode files to various formats and bit-rates when exporting/"synchronising" to a player.

Does many other things too.