“I have ripped a good number of CD’s that I ripped using WMP and I guess I didn’t realize that it ripped them into WMA format by default. I would like to know how to convert the WMA files to MP3.
For this tutorial I ripped a American Idol CD that I owned into WMA format with Windows Media Player. Please don’t laugh its a pretty darn good CD!
Download foobar2000 and LAME MP3 Encoder. Unzip the LAME MP3 folder and the put the unzipped folder somewhere you’ll remember cause we’re gonna need it later.
With foobar2000 open click on “File” and browse to “Add Folder”.
Your songs from your folder(s) should now be imported into foobar2000. Click “Edit” and scroll down to “Select All” to highlight all the songs to convert to MP3.
Now right-click anywhere in the highlighted area, click on “Convert”.
A new dialog box will appear. In the Output format section select MP3 (LAME) 190 kbps, which is pretty decent quality but if you want even better quality (and larger file size) click on the little button on the right hand side to get even more options by using the slider. I like the best quality so I slide it all the way to the right hand side for “245kbps (*), VO”.
Create a folder on your Desktop or wherever for the converted files.
In the Preview window you can see the songs that will be converted into MP3’s.
Click OK when ready. You will get a warning about converting one lossy codec to another will degrade the music a bit, if you’re ok with that click YES to proceed.
Locate the folder you created for the converted files and click Open, and now locate the LAME.exe file that you downloaded and unzipped, click “Open” again.
Your music should begin converting now and could take a few minutes depending on the amount of songs.
When its done converting to MP3’s you will get a dialog box with the songs converted.
That’s one free way to convert your WMA music to a more user friendly MP3 format. Happy listening.