AUDIO ENCODING SOFTWARE

[Steve]

Here's the 4 main ones that I use. All of them are free: -

 

winLAME

http://winlame.sourceforge.net/

 

Allows you to encode audio to high quality LAME mp3s or Ogg Vorbis files. Also allows you to decode those files back to wavs. It can encode/decode whole folders at once. mp3 is still the most popular format, despite it being over a decade old and being superceded by superior formats such as those mentioned below.

 

OggDropXPD

http://www.rarewares.org/ogg.html

 

Drag and drop interface for encoding audio to Ogg Vorbis files. Ogg is superior to mp3 and has some support in the portable player market. iRiver players support Ogg Vorbis files.

 

MPC Batch Encoder

http://www.musepack.net/index.php?pg=win

 

Another format that's superior to mp3. You can also decode files back to wavs. MPC has no support in the portable player market as far as I'm aware, but it has a really great sound to it that is easily distinguishable from mp3 files IMO.

 

FLAC Frontend

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

 

FLAC is a lossless audio codec enabling you to compress wav files by around 50% with no loss in quality at all. You can also decode files back to wavs. This is a great format for archiving music projects without having to encode them using one of the lossy compression options mentioned above. There's virtually no support in the portable player market, although the now discontinued Rio Karma will play FLAC files.

 

All of these formats can be played by foobar2000 or Winamp (with the correct plug-ins).