WMA Encoders

[trancejeremy]

I recently got an mp3/wma player. A 20 gig model. However, I soon discovered that 20 gigs is not enough for my music collection, and so have started encoding to WMA instead of MP3, since it's about half the size and the quality is okay enough.

However, I would like to convert the mp3s I've already encoded to WMA, without having to re-rip them from cd. I foudn I could do that with Nero's encoder, but it doesn't carry over the tag information. Which is a pain to have to re-enter manually.

Is there any WMA encoder that will convert from MP3 and preserve the tags?

(I've tried google/yahoo, but all the top results are simply "spam" sites, full of dodgy ads and links to other lousy sites)

 

[Psionicist]

Why don't you just reencode the MP3:s? My music collection is 192 kbps cbr MP3:s or higher + FLAC. I reencode everything to 96 kbps before I transfer it to my MP3-player though. That's 720 kilobyte / minute.

I would personally stay away from WMA. The format has changed lots in the past, and it will change even more when Windows Vista is released.

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, at least to my ear, because a 96 kbps MP3 sounds worse than a 96 kbps WMA. I was originally planning to stay with MP3, but once I started running out of space, I started ripping to WMA, and I honestly can't tell the difference between 96 kbps WMA and 192 kbps mp3s.

Now, generally speaking, I can't tell the difference between a 160 kbps mp3 and higher, but I can tell the difference between 160 and 128 kbps or less.