Batch Convert Audio Files with Switch
Last Updated on Saturday, 21 January 2012 05:07 Written by Alan Monday, 30 January 2012 07:00
Not many people these days keep audio CD’s. For most of us, all of the CD’s we owned have been ripped to our computers, stored on backups, and/or moved to cloud storage. In our house we began ripping all of our CD’s years ago and then selling the discs to a music shop that dealt in used discs. It saved us a lot of shelf space and made listening to our music a lot easier as well. However, in the early days, I elected to use WMA (Windows Media Audio) as my format of choice, although I wave since switched to MP3. Nothing wrong with that, it’s a great format for music. However, it’s also not compatible with all services, like Amazon Cloud Player. So, what do you do if you have a large bunch of music that needs to be converted to another audio type?
One solution is a free program called Switch, from NCH Software. That’s what we’re going to be trying out here today. Once you have downloaded the app and begun the installation you will be asked if you would like to install any of the extras that come along with it. This isn’t anything nefarious, but a couple of them are checked by default (like the Ask.com toolbar) so be careful here.
The user interface is pretty spartan by today’s software standards, and that’s a good thing. You can add files or folders, play songs to get a sample or make sure it’s the file you wanted, and choose from a few options. At the bottom of the screen you can choose the audio format you want to output and the folder where you want the new files sent to.
Select your music, or a folder full of it, by browsing your PC or network and then choose what format you would like it converted to. Now choose the folder that you want your new files placed in and click the big “Convert” button at the bottom right of the screen.
The conversion goes fairly quickly and I am testing it with Switch installed on a Laptop (on 802.11n) and the files I converted were on a computer with an ethernet connection to the the router.
You can choose, in the options, to delete the source file upon conversion (this isn’t set by default), but I would recommend making sure your new files are good and then using them to replace the old format ones.
In my tests Switch worked flawlessly. It’s a small file and doesn’t come with bloatware, although as I said earlier, watch the installation to make sure you only get what you want. It handles a LOT of audio file formats and converts music quickly. The interface is straight-forward to use. The app is free as well, although there is a paid version that adds a few more features. You can get a copy by visiting NCH Software.
MediaHuman Audio Converter is a Free and Easy Audio Utility
Last Updated on Tuesday, 3 January 2012 07:58 Written by Alan Saturday, 14 January 2012 06:00
When it comes to audio programs there are no shortage of free ones and paid ones on the internet. Many of those will convert your audio files from one format to another, but the good free ones can be hard to find (not to mention you have to be careful of malware and programs that install other things with them, like browser toolbars) and the best ones are usually paid apps. Worse, they are all, for the most part, complicated to use for the average PC person.
Now a company named MediaHuman has an app that can convert your audio files with a minimum of fuss. They have come up with a simple click and drag file system that makes you wonder why nobody has done this before (if someone has then let us know because we haven’t seen it).
Once you have installed the app and started it up then you can begin converting your audio right away, no learning curve here. The main screen is the simple drag and drop interface that you put next to your Windows Explorer pane to drag your audio files over.
Across the top of the screen are a few simple options. You can click the “plus” button to browse for audio files on your computer or network. The “broom” icon button will clear the list. The “minus” button removes an item from your list. There is a button that brings up drop-down lists to choose the format you would like to convert your audio files to and the bitrate you prefer. There’s also buttons to begin your conversion and to change your settings.
The program handles audio in AAC, AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, and WMA file formats. It’s compatible with both Windows and Mac computers. They list the following system requirements on their site.
- Windows 7 32bit/64bit, Windows Vista 32bit/64bit, Windows 2003 32bit/64bit, Windows XP 32bit/64bit for PC systems
- Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Intel only, Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)
- About 60Mb of free hard drive space
You can get the program for free by visiting the MediaHuman site. Audio has become one of the most popular file types on today’s computers and sooner or later everyone has a need for a good, simple conversion tool.
Media.io Updates Adds More Functionality
Last Updated on Wednesday, 4 January 2012 08:16 Written by Alan Saturday, 7 January 2012 07:00
One of our favorite web apps of 2011, Media.io, has issued a major update for the new year. Media.io is an online tool for converting audio files that can easily turn your music from MP3 to WMA or from any one format to another easily and for free. We reviewed it a while back and you can check out our hands on here. Since that review the developer has continued to update the program with more and more functionality.
Media.io developer, Johann, has done a great job of updating the app, as well as it’s audio files capability, and he has now added more functionality to convert all of your music and audio files. New updates include the ability to share music and audio files, language updates, and better uptime. A full list of the updates added are included below.
- You can now share media.io with your friends using ShareThis. Personally, I’m not a fan of 3rd party widgets and I had to clean up ShareThis’ widget to make it less invasive to your privacy and to make it load faster.
- Korean translation. media.io is now available in Korean.
- Romanian translation. media.io is now available in Romanian. You might ask yourself “why Korean and Romanian?” – it’s got to do with the love media.io gets from particular countries.
- Less resampling. To compensate for flaws in
oggenc, I was resampling files to 44100 Hz on the old VPS. This has now been removed, resulting in better quality Ogg Vorbis files. - Performance improvements. It might seem hard to achieve, but I’ve found one or two tricks that make media.io load even faster worldwide. Every second counts.
- 100 % uptime in December 2011. While not really a new feature, the server media.io runs on has been rock solid in December with absolutely no downtime measured by Pingdom.
With all of the improvements it has become even easier to convert your music files from one audio format to another. Audio.io was one of the coolest web apps we found in 2011. It’s free to use and is compatible with almost every music format. If you have audio files that you would like to convert then head over to media.io to get started.
