snarlydwarf;157975 Wrote: 
> Unless they are lossless WMA, you probably want to leave them asis or
> rerip them.

Well yes, I agree, but when you have thousands of WMA tracks, this will
take a very long time (assuming that re-ripping IS an option). And for
an iPod, leaving them "asis" is definitely not an option.

I recently switched from a Zen to an iPod (connected to Windows), and
had a similar situation. I tried using iTunes to convert WMA to mp3;
the results were OK (to my ears) but even a few files took absolutely
ages. No hope for doing several thousand!

My next approach was to convert using MediaMonkey. (I have a vague
recollection that I managed to persuade it to do WMA to AAC.)  This
also seemed to be very slow, though not as slow as iTunes.

Finally, I opted to buy Red Chair's Anapod Explorer. This performs
transcoding on the fly for a variety of formats (though not to AAC in
my experience - I use mp3). It seems faster than MM, and is more
convenient. (However, one limitation seems to be that it's not possible
to transfer artwork at the same; so for new rips I use MM rather than
Anapod to transcode to mp3, add the artwork to the folder then drop it
onto Anapod. Wish I'd known to do that before the thousands of files I
put through the transcoder! Not that I ever look at the artwork...)

> 
> Why?  Because the nature of lossy compression gets worse with every
> generation of re-encoding.
> 

But I believe the OP was interested in transcoding just for the iPod.
The additional loss might not be significant. (Might!)

> 
> A lossy file converted to FLAC, for example, will sound -exactly-
> like the lossy file, and take 3-4 times the disk space.
> 

But will be playable somewhere that supports FLAC but not WMA.

> 
> That's one of the advantages to ripping to FLAC: rip once and convert
> to whatever you want.   With a lossy rip, you will have to redo it if
> you ever change your mind about what format you want.

Indeed; that's why all my new rips are to FLAC.  But I still have a lot
of history to revisit...

-- Brian


-- 
Brian Ritchie
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