New Mac user...converting WMA to MP3?

[Tom Servo]

I'll bet folks here have a good recommendation for this...

I finally bit the bullet and went Mac from PC and now need to convert many GB of windows media audio files to MP3.  There appear to be several free programs that do this...any recommendations?  Would be great if I could find a simple one with batch conversion that kept all of the names and tags.  I haven't transferred the files over yet so I could do the conversion on the pc or the mac...

Thanks!

[Chip Chanko]

If you're using iTunes on the Mac you can just add them to your library and itunes will convert them. I'm not sure if it will use your default mp3 encode settings in itunes or ask what settings you want to use to encode them.

EDIT: Looks like you'll need to convert them in iTunes on the windows computer. I guess iTunes on the mac won't do the conversion. This may still be easier than using a third-party program.

[Justin Tonation]

Oh, gawd. Lossy to lossy. You're gonna kill your sound. Re-rip your CDs; re-download your digital. Rip and download in lossless if you can afford the space (and, really, it's more affordable than ever; a 1TB HD can hold around 3,000 CDs in lossless ALAC (Apple lossless) or FLAC (iTunes and iPods won't do FLAC, however; don't know about Macs in general). If you need even smaller files later, you can make MP3s or AACs from the lossless files.

If you really must convert any WMAs to another lossy format, I suggest AAC instead of MP3. Better sound and smaller files at the same resolution, and nearly everything accepts AACs nowadays; anything that doesn't must be really old. And only convert to the highest resolution.

[Tom Servo]

Good point.  I'll suck it up and re-rip.