On Friday 28 April 2006 20:49, Peter Van Lone wrote: Install the w32-codecs pack from Packman and you should be set.

What tool can I use in SUSE10 to convert WMA files to OGG format?

My kid ripped a ton of cds for me, a couple years ago, to WMA format. I'd like to convert all of those to OGG so that I can play them in Amarok.

Is there a preferred tool for doing this? Or is there anyway to play WMA files in Amarok?

P

On 4/28/06, Till Wimmer wrote:

If you have MPlayer and sox, you can do it like this:

Put this in a script file e.g. wma2ogg.sh <snip>

excellent, thank you Till and Andres, too ... Peter

On Friday 28 April 2006 20:58, michael norman wrote: [snip]

audiokonverter should also probably do it, I've not tried it as I have no WMA files.

I don't mean to criticize any of the conversion suggestions, and I'm not an audio expert, but I recall reading some time ago that such conversions might produce less than satisfactory results. I believe that WMA files are compressed from the .wav (44.1Khz stereo digital audio) files produced from ripping the CD tracks. In this process, some (generally inaudible) information is removed such that when uncompressed back to .wav format the sound is still pretty good, but the overall quality is somewhat less. Most people wouldn't care about this loss. The problem arises when the second generation audio tracks, WMA files when uncompressed, are then re-compressed using a different method such as with ogg-vorbis. It also removes some information, but in a different way, so an already degraded sound track can be degraded still further. I have read that some people can hear the quality difference from the first, to second, then third generation audio. Given this, my approach would be to get the codec libraries required to play the WMA files as you have them. Jim Cunning - (now the real audio experts can correct or amplify my comments)