Convert wav files into MP3

[gb14820]

What is the best program for converting wav files into MP3? Any recommendations?
Thanks

[wolleric]

Use dBPowerAmp. It converts from/to: WAV, MP3, WMA, OGG, CD Audio and other formats (plug-ins). It's free, small, very easy to use, fast and has a lot of options. And it also produces great quality.

[gandalf]

The one that I use is CDex which u can get at

http://www.cdex.n3.net/

I find it eay to use and very configurable.

Give it a try, maybe others are beter but I find it sooo easy.. to use and the quality is A1 excellent....

quote from their site

"CDex is indeed a free product; it is open source and available to anyone who wants it"
Open source, open mind...... good enough for me........

[vh5150]

I use soundforge to convert any time of audio file. Especially to .mp3.

[EddyH]

I may get a slaying for this, but MusicMatch Jukebox is quite good. Well. The version I have anyway, v6, which is a particular old release At the point just where they got the mp3 encoding right but before they screwed up the interface.

For really high quality stuff it's not the best, but if you want to put out a good 128k standard file really fast it's the business. Plus it has the frequency range locked down to 16khz by default, which is a good idea for anything under 192k. (Don't worry, it's changable).

The only problem with is it that it has a few brain tumours as regards anything much different from 128-44-stereo. Low rate mono files tend to get stereo'd, or vice versa, without so much as a by-your-leave. Treble response and distortion can be pretty nasty on 192k+ files, etc. VBR is also somewhat low class.

So alternatives instead......

For low bitrate, mono, etc files, the 'built in' windows codecs are OK, (especially if you get the hacked versions that go to 56 or 128k) if you have a program that can use them without generating mp3-wavs, or a stripper program like Wav4MP3. You're not going to get stunning quality with those sound rates anyway, unless you use WMA (microsoft, ack) OGG (sweet, but not very common) or MP3pro (licensed to hell & back).

For moderate-level constant bitrate, MMJB is your man, between 96 and 192k with smart use of the bandwidth limiter. (12 or 13 at 96, 14 or 15 at 112, 16 for the others). Also pretty good for mono 44khz at 56-80k, mono 22khz at 32k or 40k, which are -super- fast, if you have a lot of dictaphone recordings or old tv programs to convert (for both, the bw limiter is inactive tho - they get locked down to around 7 or 14khz i think).

For any VBR, or high-rate CBR, it's Lame all the way. Combine it with RazorLame for ease of use and the refined "r3mix" settings for some seriously sweet sound quality, at the expense of a lot of bits! (not so much as you'd fear, though, thanks to clever coding). The treble is perfect, and the stereo image is always good even with joint stereo.
Only problem is with Lame, I think it may be related to the CoolEdit GNU MP2 encoder - heinously slow. My 850mhz PC barely makes realtime with some encodes, which is more than 12 times slower than Musicmatch on the same material!

[MOVIEGEEK]

I vote CDex but goldwave is another good one:
www.goldwave.com