On Friday 21 January 2005 02:12, Patrick wrote: >Can anybody give me any advice on how to convert WMA audio files to > OGG?? > >I have a collegue who's using Windows XP and wants to switch to > Linux (yeah!). Unfortunately he has 20gig on WMA files which he > would like to convert to OGG. > >To solve this, I have be using Google (my best friend) and couldn't > find an easy way. Except converting it first to wave (using > mplayer) and converting it back to ogg. If you have 10 - 20 files, > it is a possibility, but not with 20gig... > >Under Windows he tried it with a commercial package (luckily not > paid for *cough*)... But under Linux, it appears that there is no > real software package that can do it... strange... > >Any suggestions? > >Regards, >PatrickM Generally speaking, your friend will be far better off sonicly, to re-rip the music from the disks. I don't think he would be at all impressed with the results of such a 'conversion'. Each compression method has its own list of stuff it can throw away without being noticed by the ear, and when you add what ogg throws out to what WMA (or mp3) throws out, the result isn't usually smaller files, but audio thats mushy and quite tiresome to listen to. I made some comparison files from some of my disks, both with a commercial shareware encoder for making mp3's and with the ogg method. To me the obvious winner at any comparable bit rate was ogg, and at quality level 6, its very very difficult to tell the ogg from the original, at Q7 there is no discernable difference, and I can listen to it all night with no fatigue whatsoever. I don't have more than 20 megs of mp3's in my own collection of about 2.5 gigs. and it sure beats lugging a 20+ pound cd holder around and getting it stolen. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) 99.32% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
