Author Topic: Fastest Audio Converter (Read 29935 times)

HankFriedman · « **on:** December 01, 2010, 10:18 PM »

I regularly convert WMA audio files to MP3 files, and have tested many free programs including:

the Koyote Soft Free MP3 WMA converter

the open source Freac

NCH Swift Sound converter

Pazera Free Audio extractor

the BeeThink Music Handle

and a few others, and they all took over 3 minutes to convert a 93 MB WMA file recorded at 44199 Hz to a file @ 22,050 Hz 96 kbits per second joint stereo

and then I tested the Free Audio Converter 7.1.5 that I downloaded from http://www.free-audi...audio_converter.html

and it took only one minute! (over three times faster than the best of the other freeware programs!)

It can convert between MP3, OGG, WAV, and WMA files with excellent control over all settings.

I wanted all of you to know of this great program.

Thanks

cmpm · « **Reply #1 on:** December 02, 2010, 04:06 AM »

You have to agree to this to install it.

In order to provide this free download, RelevantKnowledge software, provided by TMRG, Inc., a comScore, Inc. company, is included in this download. This software allows millions of participants in an online market research community to voice their opinions by allowing their online browsing and purchasing behavior to be monitored, collected, aggregated, and once anonymized, used to generate market reports which our clients use to understand Internet trends and patterns and other market research purposes. The information which is monitored and collected includes internet usage information, basic demographic information, certain hardware, software, computer configuration and application usage information about the computer on which you install RelevantKnowledge. We may use the information that we monitor, such as name and address, to better understand your household demographics; for example, we may combine the information that you provide us with additional information from consumer data brokers and other data sources in accordance with our privacy policy. We make commercially viable efforts to automatically filter confidential personally identifiable information and to purge our databases of such information about our panelists when inadvertently collected. By clicking Accept, you acknowledge that you are 18 years of age or older, an authorized user of this computer, and that you have read, agreed to, and have obtained the consent to the terms and conditions of the Privacy Statement and User License Agreement from anyone who will be using the computer on which you install this application.

Nod32 caught it.

HankFriedman · « **Reply #2 on:** December 02, 2010, 09:23 AM »

Dear cmpm,

thank you very much for the heads up, I missed that.

Can any of you help me find a really fast and flexible audio converter that doesn't have this catch?

thanks

cmpm · « **Reply #3 on:** December 02, 2010, 10:13 AM »

VLC can convert, don't know if it's fast or has enough options for you.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_vlc/

Also mp3 Convert Master may help.
A trial period, then $15 and I'm not sure if it will do what you want.
Just have to check it out I suppose....

http://www.mp3convertmaster.com/

HankFriedman · « **Reply #4 on:** December 02, 2010, 10:35 AM »

I just tested MP3 Convert Master and it's slow, and has a really ugly as well as kludgy interface (e.g. no clear indication of processing progress or even that it's started processing)

I've had BSOD in the past with VLC so I'll give that one a pass.

Thank you for looking for me.

JavaJones · « **Reply #5 on:** December 02, 2010, 04:27 PM »

BonkEnc? http://www.bonkenc.org/
Personally *quality* is more important than raw speed for me, but I guess when you're converting from one lossy format to another it may not be the primary concern as much is already lost.

- Oshyan

Curt · « **Reply #6 on:** December 02, 2010, 05:01 PM »

Thanks for telling, Hank. However, it is not for me. The faster the conversion, the poorer the quality. Period! If the audio track is 5 minutes, the conversion should take 5 minutes and some. It is easy (for me) to hear the difference if I convert on double speed; the curtain in front of the sound gets even thicker, the bass even more muddy.

HankFriedman · « **Reply #7 on:** December 02, 2010, 05:13 PM »

Dear Curt,

You are missing the fact that software that uses more than one core at a time will be significantly faster.

I did A-B comparisons of the file as converted by slow and very fast programs and any difference was completely inaudible to me.

thank you all for you help.

Also, the Bonk aka fre:ac converter was one I tested. slow

Curt · « **Reply #8 on:** December 02, 2010, 05:25 PM »

I use a converter that will convert 10-12 files at the same time, at 1:1 speed.
That makes it 12 files a' 5 minutes, converted in 5 minutes and some.

Edited:
I can click "fast", and it will convert 16-18 files in 3 minutes (double speed).

Curt · « **Reply #9 on:** December 02, 2010, 05:51 PM »

The fastest converter is not a converter but a transcoder ;-)

The people behind the free MediaCoder should be whipped for adding nagging features to their program... remember to scroll down their homepage and click "do not open this next time" etcetera!!

, but the transcoding is very fast and of high quality.

http://www.mediacode...hq.com/editions.html

HankFriedman · « **Reply #10 on:** December 02, 2010, 06:13 PM »

Dear Curt,

Boy is mediacoder confusing.

I downloaded the CUDA version and the menu was in either Japanese or Chinese (I don't know which) with no way to get it in English

so I downloaded the 64 bit version and kept being sent back to their website with NoScript warnings when I tried to set up the program.

Should I just give up on mediacoder? Is it a web-based solution? What a terrible design.

HankFriedman · « **Reply #11 on:** December 02, 2010, 06:25 PM »

I finally got MediaCoder to work, and it's very slow (about 3x slower than the average program or more) so I'm not sure why it's considered so fast.

Perhaps if I got the CUDA version in English...

Curt · « **Reply #12 on:** December 02, 2010, 07:10 PM »

sorry, I didn' imagine such scenario in advance. Use either Audio or Full Edition only. CUDA is for hand-held devices.

lanux128 · « **Reply #13 on:** December 02, 2010, 08:14 PM »

have you tried winLAME?

HankFriedman · « **Reply #14 on:** December 03, 2010, 12:21 AM »

Just tried winLAME. about twice as slow as most programs and 6 times slower than the fastest one.

Again, thanks to all of you for your suggestions. I'm happy to try them all out.

lanux128 · « **Reply #15 on:** December 03, 2010, 06:10 AM »

sorry to hear that, i wonder if the underlying LAME dll is the latest.. in any case, i have another suggestion - Free Mp3/Wma/Ogg Converter.

btw, i don't come across much WMA files so i haven't tried this before..

• http://freemp3wmacon...Converter/index.html

HankFriedman · « **Reply #16 on:** December 03, 2010, 11:22 AM »

Thank you for the recommendation.

Yes, I had tested that one too. (About 3 - 4 minutes to convert my file).

By the way, I retested the fastest program and I really can't hear any difference at all.

xtabber · « **Reply #17 on:** December 03, 2010, 09:51 PM »

I've been using Easy CD-DA ( http://www.poikosoft.com/) for years to convert between formats with excellent results.

It is fast, but not free - $32.23 or $53.71 for a lifetime license. It has a 30-day trial period, so you can try it on your file and see if it is worth the cost to you.

HankFriedman · « **Reply #18 on:** December 03, 2010, 10:32 PM »

Easy CD-DA has a nice interface, but is again much slower than average.

MrZebulon · « **Reply #19 on:** December 04, 2010, 01:46 PM »

sorry, I didn' imagine such scenario in advance. Use either Audio or Full Edition only. CUDA is for hand-held devices.
-Curt (December 02, 2010, 07:10 PM)

@Curt

Hey Curt - please let me correct you.
CUDA hast nothing to do with hand-held devices. It's a a parallel computing architecture developed by NVIDIA that let programs (developed with a special api) use the graphics processing units (GPUs) to work faster.

Kind greetings

Curt · « **Reply #20 on:** December 04, 2010, 03:27 PM »

CUDA hast nothing to do with hand-held devices. It's a a parallel computing architecture developed by NVIDIA that let programs (developed with a special api) use the graphics processing units (GPUs) to work faster.
-MrZebulon (December 04, 2010, 01:46 PM)

thanks for correcting me

How will it respond if the pc doesn't have nVidia Cuda?

Curt · « **Reply #21 on:** December 04, 2010, 03:51 PM »

I was confused by Hank saying that MediaCoder was very slow. It must have been the settings that were "wrong". 15 seconds to convert ("transcode") a normal 5 minutes song, from wma to mp3, is not slow at all:

click to enlarge, to see the settings:

Fastest Audio Converter

HankFriedman · « **Reply #22 on:** December 04, 2010, 05:32 PM »

Dear Curt,

Your numbers are correct, but I'm converting files much larger than that, and Mediacoder takes 3 minutes or more for each, compared to one minute for the Free Audio Converter 7.1.5 which has the unfortunate Relevant Knowledge "spyware" included with it.

Curt · « **Reply #23 on:** December 05, 2010, 02:47 AM »

I'm keeping my point of view.

114 MB in 35 seconds:

270 MB in 80 seconds:

Curt · « **Reply #24 on:** December 05, 2010, 03:40 AM »

The previous transcoding examples were converted into MP3 CBR mode. MP3 VBR mode is even faster:

From a single ½ GigaBytes, 78 minutes long 44.100 WMA Lossless (1192 kbps) file into 22.050 MP3 VBR 64 81 kbps: 112 seconds!