I've got about 40GB of music which I converted over time at WMA @128kb. In order to make more room I want to reencode them at 96kb, preferably without going back and re-ripping from CD's. A few questions:

1) Am I better off staying with WMA or should I go OggVorbis or whatever?

2) The reason for this thread, most of the programs that I have will only reencode 1 track or file at a time, this is hellish. Does anyone know of a programme (preferably freeware) that will batch encode everything? The idea of just clicking once and then going away for a day or so is attractive to me.

It's called "transcoding". And it will almost certainly give you poorer audio quality than encoding directly at 96 kbps from the CDs.

Best conversion app out there IMHO:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

I agree with ScottC.
There are additional modules that you can dl and add on, that will give you extra functionality.

Yeah, dbpoweramp is great for conversions.

I'm re-ripping everything in flac (free lossless audio codec) format so I can convert it to whatever format I want to when I need it converted. Since flac is lossless, I can pick the data rate I need at the time of conversion to MP3 or whatever format I need at the time.

Since flac is lossless I don't have to make any compromises when I rip the CDs and there's no transcoding loss later. You just need lots of disk space, but disks are very cheap these days.

-David

I downloaded dbpoweramp last time it was mentioned around these parts, the big drawback (unless I am missing something) is that there is no batch re-encode, which would mean that I would have to do them all one by one. If I'm missing something please tell me.

I know it works for ".rm" and ".ra" files, but what about ".rax" files? Has anyone converted them?

There is an addon, I think the batch part is in the "powerpack"...

1 - DBPowerAmp is pretty good.... but I find it to be unwieldy. At least take a llook at EZ-CDDA at http://www.poikosoft.com. Easy, quick, and great for both ripping and transcoding.

2 - As someone else said... transcoding from one lossy format to another (WMA to MP3) will really screw your audio quality. What I and many others do, and I heartily recommend, is that you take the time to go back and rip your collection to a lossLESS format like FLAC (my preference) or APE. Then you can transcode to your hearts content to any other format (so long as you always go back to the lossless as your source) with no loss in audio quality.

3 - In my (somewhat) humble opinion, MP3 at 96kbps pretty well sucks.... your mileage may vary. Suggest you give a listen to Ogg/Vorbis encoded files. I personally find that Ogg encoded at a Q-level that's equivelent to 91-92kbps performs better than MP3 at 128.

4- For more opinions, help, and listening tests.... I suggest www.hydrogenaudio.com.

Cheers,
D.