Converting WMA Files into MP3 Files Los Angeles CA

Steps

1. Install the above-mentioned software onto your computer, using either the source or precompiled binaries for your platform.
2. Convert the WMA files into an intermediate format, the space-wasting but lossless WAV (wave) standard: mplayer -vo null -vc dummy -af resample=44100 -ao pcm "Song 1.wma"
3. Now convert the result of the previous command (stored as audiodump.wav by default) into MP3:lame audiodump.wav "Song 1.mp3"
4. That's it! Continue the process for each file you wish to convert. See Tips for some ways to streamline and/or improve this method.
5. When complete, each directory you visited will have the last file converted still stored as audiodump.wav. You will probably want to delete these obsolete files to conserve space using the rm (Unix) or del (Windows) command.
6. You may also want to delete the original wma files, after verifying that the quality of the resulting mp3 songs is acceptable.

Tips

• There are many variations on the lame software, including notlame, twolame, and toolame. Install whichever suits your needs and/or is readily available for your platform. The syntax for some will be different; even older versions of lame used the -o switch to specify the output file; see the source article for examples.
• You can write a script to enable searching your entire hard drive for wma files and converting them automatically. See the source article for examples. This one was written (on Windows/Cygwin) for the best space savings, using the lowest possible quality setting for the MP3 output:#!/bin/bashfor file in "$@"; do mplayer \ -vo null \ -vc dummy \ -af resample=44100 \ -ao pcm:file="${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.wav" \ "$file" lame -V9 "${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.wav" "${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.mp3" rm -f "${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.wav"doneThis one doesn't search the hard drive, it just converts the WMA files you specify on the command line, e.g.:$ wma2mp3 *.wma

Sources and Citations

• Convert WMA to MP3, the source article that provided the information for this one. Click on "read full thread" near the bottom of the page to see all the modifications to the original script.
• MPlayer, open-source audio/video playing and conversion software
• lame, open-source MP3 conversion software

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