I was just wondering if there was a way to convert an mp3 to an audio type of format and vice versa that is available readily over the net. I have been interested in putting up some of my music but am not sure what I would have to do.
Thanks guys.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Tons of them. My favourite is called WinAmp, and it’s a freebie.
WinAmp is good, so is MusicMatch JukeBox, I believe most CD Burners will come with the software that allows you to do it as well.
The question is unclear. You can convert a .MP3 file to .WAV by using any number of programs. WAV is a computer file format which can use different sampling rates, channels etc and can use compression (including MP3) or not.
CD AUDIO is something else altogether. CD audio is a CD format which requires PCM at 44100/2/2 BUT it also includes different low level formatting which is different from what a computer uses. A computer cannot use CDAudio directly nor can you just record a WAV file to CDAUDIO because it involves a change of format.
This has been discussed in a few threads already so you can find a more detailed explanation if you search the board
I’m pretty sure the latest WIndows Media Player will burn an Audio disc (that can be played anywhere) from a playlist of MP3 files.
I will say this - when talking about the first step of making the MP3’s into a CD (the MP3 to WAV conversion) I do find that Winamp seems to give much better audio quality in the resulting WAV. I don’t know why, and I wasn’t expecting this. But having used 3 programs to convert the same MP3 to a WAV, I noticed a distinct improvement using Winamp to do it over the other two. I couldn’t imagine why though.
I’ve got WinAmp. I would suggest that you download the plugin “Geiss”. It’s like visual acid.
Here’s my question: I have winamp, but can or how do I make it convert MP3s into .WAVs?
I find the easiest way to do it is with the software that came with my burner. Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4. Drag and drop MP3’s to the potential CD layout, and it converts to audio! And good, too. This is how I make my car CD’s these days.
Sorta a “hidden feature”:
Click on “Options”, then “Preferences”. You will get the preferences box, which has a Tree-Control on the left. Select “Plug-ins”, first, and “Output” under that. The right-hand side of the dialog box should list Output Plug-ins. Change the selection to “Nullsoft Dick Writer Plugin (out_disk.dll)” Click on the “Configure” button to select the directory you wish to send the WAV’s to.
Then close the box and close the preferences. Select a song, or playlist, and hit the “Play” button. Winamp will start “playing” the songs, but at 5 times speed, and sound will be heard. It is actually writing all the songs to the location you selected.
To get back to playing music, go back to the same location and select the "Nullsoft Wave Out Plugin (out_wave.dll).
My Que! FireWire drive came with Toast 4.1, and I can just drag and drop MP3 files directly onto it and it’ll burn them. Writes at 8X, too.
I use a small freeare app called MP32WAV (original name huh?) to convert mp3s to wavs. Very quick and simple to use.
Semi-related question that my dad was asking this weekend. Is there a way to hook up a stereo to the PC so you can create sound files from tapes? Ideally, they’d be MP3’s, but he’d settle for anything right now.
So…can you hook this up somehow? Anyone?
Um, I’ve found that the Disk Writer plugin works better, and is actually less painful 
Other than that, Anthracite is exactly right.
Falcon
Don’t know what you’ve got software-wise, but I can do what you’re asking as follows:
My sound card has a “line in” port - yours most likely does as well. Get yourself an RCA to 1/8" stereo male cable. RCA connects to tape deck, 1/8" jack to line in on sound card.
Here’s the part that you may need to check on. I have a Sound Blaster card, and it came with a bunch of software, one such program is Wave Studio. It’s what I use to edit wave files after I’ve converted them using Winamp’s disk writer feature. Wave Studio also allows you to record from input (eg line in port or microphone port). If you have a Sound Blaster card, check your software, if not, check what you’ve got to see if it will allow you to record from an external source or some stuff like that.
When you get that part straight, you can start recording from a tape deck to your PC as a .wav file. You can then convert it to mp3, or burn it straight to a cd.
I have done this, but don’t be surprised if your output file has pops and clicks in it.
Falcon, I do this all the time and it is very easy. Just input the audio signal into the AUX input of your audio card. You can then record to a WAV file and then covert it to whatever you want. I have hours of music from tapes plus hors of radi (A Prairie Home Companion) on my hard disk.
Antracite, what you say is very interesting and I do not understand why that would happen. To convert MP3 to WAV I use MMWave which is probably the oldest and worst and it gives all the quality I need. I do not understand why another program would do worse…
One note: Some CD players will support direct binary extraction and will supposedly give better quality WAVs than those where the audio is converted to analog and back to digital. This is the theory for purists of course. I cannot tell the difference.
In fact, the highest quality I use is 56Kbit/s as I really do not appreciate anything better and I save disk space
Comparison KBytes per minute :
Uncompressed PCM 44100/2/2 = 10,335
128Kbits/s MP3 44100/2/2 = 960
56Kbits/s MP3 22050/2/2 = 420
24Kbits/s MP3 22050/2/1 = 180
For good recordings I will use 56Kbps and spoken word or older stuff (which is lower quality and was recorded mono to begin with) at 24 Kbit/s. That saves a ton of disk space.
I personally use mpg123 to convert to .WAV format, then SOX to convert to cd audio format. I make a lot of cd’s for people, so I whipped up a script to do it. Anyway, I would recommend checking out http://www.softseek.com, which I’m sure has a mulitude of such programs. Also, I imagine your CD writer came with some burning/conversion software, I know mine did, although I’ve never checked it out.
OMIGOD! Did I actually say that? 
Neither do I sailor. Like I said, I certainly wasn’t expecting it, and came across it on accident. Then I had a friend do a “blind test” with me, converting 2 songs with all three converters, for a total of 6. I was easily able to pick out the Winamp ones, from the first few notes practically. One was MusicMatch Jukebox, the other was a command-line DOS one whose name escapes me.
I mean, I’m pretty sure the decoding is a standard, and should not vary. However, I noticed once in Winamp’s release notes a note to the effect of “better code for improved playback quality”? Very strange indeed, and I offer no explaination.
Antracite, this got me thinking…
If you “open” a file compressed with MP3, with any program, that program calls the same codec who decodes it and gives it back to the program. So the decoding to PCM is always the same. ,
Have you noticed if the programs differ in quality when dealing with straight PCM? Could it be that you have a slow computer and the program uses resources so the codec cannot keep up?
Even that would be strange as codec decoding does not take much processing. Encoding on the other hand is very processor intensive.
Side note: I recorded a WAV file on a floppy and gave it to a friend. It sounded fine on my computer but she told me on hers it sounded awful. After asking a few questions I determined her computer was having trouble reading the floppy so it was reading it slower than needed. I told her to copy the file to the HD and then from there it sounded OK.