Ripped 100 Albums to WMA files- I need help

[Pinball]

We just ripped over 100 CD albums to add to our jukebox. I just noticed that they were ripped as WMA files.  Is there any easy way to cleanly convert these to MP3s or do we need to re-rip all of these...     

[Novalak]

converting the converted is a bad a idea, major loss in quality

rerip!

[Pinball]

Re-Ripping at this point is not an option. I understand there is a loss of quality.  I would appreciate anyones input on a conversion utility that would let me point it at the directory containing the WMA files and do a mass conversion to MP3. 

If you convert WMA to MP3 are there any other things that need to be done, tags..  etc...?/

Thanks for your help.

[Novalak]

there are 100's of utilities out there

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=convert+wma+mp3&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

[Barcrest]

Media Monkey should do what you want via a batch script. However i don't use it that much so i couldn't tell you exactly how to do it.

[Pinball]

I installed a program called Switch by NCH software.  This tool worked great for converting an album that I originally ripped as a WMA file into an MP3 file for use on Freebox.  You can rip the files to the existing directory or a new target directory.

I am trying to figure a way to point it at the entire directory that I have the WMA files in to mass convert them. Right now I am opening one album folder at a time and converting it a a single thread operation.

That is taking almost as long as re-ripping them. 

Does anyone here have experience with Switch and can you give me any advice ?

[ecbrad]

Free and works a treat:

http://www.foobar2000.org/

Brad

[Pinball]

Thanks for the advice everyone.  I got he job done yesterday. I built a small test set of folders and files from the music directory I needed to work on for testing purposes.

I used the SWITCH software I installed. The problem was thatSwitch was stopping and "choking" on the cover.jpg and some .ini files it was seeing in the selection list.   So after I started Switch and pressed add folder to convert, I had to sort the list by extention and delete from the list all non-WMA files.  I tested it on my testy sample and it worked.  So I repeated the process on the new set of albums I had ripped as WMA files.

There were 107 CD albums in WMA format, that was 1522 song files.
The process ran on my PC for 9 and a half hours yesterday.  That was OK though, as we went out to see a baseball game and got alot of other stuff done.

Last night when the process finished, I needed to copy the cover.Jpg files into the new converted album folders.   

It sure beat re-ripping all those albums manually. 

Ran config and now my juke has 800 albums on it.

Thanks again for all you input.  I would recommend the Switch Software for anyone who needs to convert WMA to MP3.