I recently have gotten into CD burning and was wondering if there was a way to or perhaps some software that would convert MP3's to WAV files. Any help here would be appreciated. Thanks

Rick
 

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Kyle Abel
General Manager
Plano Movies 10
 

You can also make MP3 CDs, which do not convert the MP3 files. You will need a special CD player that plays MP3 CDs to listen to it, though. Several car stereos are available, and for the house you can get an Apex DVD/CD/VCD/SVCD/MP3CD player (yes it plays everything) for $129. I can't remember the exact model number. My friend has this unit and it is excellent considering the price. It has S-Video but no component outputs. If it said "Sony" instead of "Apex" but otherwise was exactly the same, it would be at least $400.

Anyway I digress. Go to www.windowstracker.com and type in "MP3 to WAV" or something in the search field. You'll be able to download right there.

It is then ready to do what you tell it to do. In the Sorce Data Type area, you can select WAV (default). The other selections are MP3 or WMA.

The Destination Data Type has 4 options. WAV,
MP3, MP3 CBR, and MP3 VBR.

I don't know what the CBR and VBR is, though.

CBR: Constant Bit Rate- basically encoding the MP3 at a fixed bitrate (i.e. 128kbps)

VBR: variable Bit Rate- The encoding engine will alter the bitrate as it is encoding, I would assume to 'optimize' the encoding process, I would figure with improved results over fixed bitrate encoding... You can tell a VBR MP3 file by watching the bitrate display on a player such as Winamp, a VBR file will have the number changing occasionally as the file plays, whereas a CBR file the number remains the same throughout.

Aaron

Well I guess it depends on the encoder, but no matter what I still can't stand the wishy washy effects of low bitrate MP3s.
 

TO CONVERT MP3 TO WAV FILES:
Click the little diagonal bow-tie in the upper left hand corner. Select OPTIONS and then PREFERENCES. Then highlight the 3rd selection down "Nullsoft disk writer plug in [out_disk.dll]" and click CONFIGURE. Once you do this you will be allowed to browse to a folder where you want the newly created WAV file to be dumped. Select it, click OK and then click CLOSE. Now just play anything in MP3 using the Winamp player that you want converted to WAV and your conversion is done. To convert the Winamp player back to an MP3 "player" and not a "WAV converter", just do the same thing, but select the original output format.

I prefer the Winamp player, as many other programs I have used cause clicks and other random noise in the conversion.
 

Do you actually have to listen to the MP3's in real time as they convert to WAV files? That would suck an incredible amount of ass! Are there ANY CURRENT CD Burning applications for Windows that DON'T automatically convert MP3's to WAV's for you when you create an audio CD?

Mac users:
You absolutely MUST have SoundApp. It kicks much ass. Not only does it play just about every sound file ever, it will covert any sound format to just about any other sound format. And it does this FAST with absolutely no audio defects whatsoever. And it takes less than 5 seconds to set it up to convert to the sound format of your choice. It does NOT encode MP3's, however. But it is free. iTunes is great, but SoundApp is small, simple, and it doesn't need a super fancy interface with skins and a bouncy graphics light show while you listen to make the program good.

Joe, the Winamp does the conversion at about a second or two to each minute of actual track.
 

WinAmp MP3 to WAV conversion
"This Blows!"
Grade = D+

Ah, welcome to the super high tech world of converting MP3 files to WAV, something that only the elite used to be able to do, but now is available for the masses, thanks to such programs as WinAmp.

In order to convert an MP3 to a WAV, you must first navigate through options, preferences, and plug-ins hierarchy(s) to select what you want. I hate this crap. It reminds me of typical Windows users who navigate through directories and subdirectories and subdirectories just to get to one program (often from the Start Menu). Why not just put an alias ("shortcut" to Windows folk) to the program on your desktop or in a folder on the desktop to make finding said program about 10,000 times quicker? Same can be said for WinAmp. The option to convert to WAV should not be hidden so deep within the bowels of the program. Anyway, after all that is completed, you then play your file and it converts fairly quick. The quality of the resulting WAV file is EXACTLY like the MP3 it came from, which is to be expected. Some people still think that when you convert an MP3 back into a WAV, you get rid of all of the compression artifacts associated with MP3. Not true.

So what makes WinAmp so bad for converting to WAV? YOU HAVE TO SET IT BACK before you can play sound files again! So if you have a playlist and you hit "Play" you will quickly find every sound file (MP3 or not) suddenly converting to large WAV files on your hard drive. I am used to just dragging and dropping a buttload of files on a program and having them all convert, and then being able to use the program as a player immediately after that is completed.

Bottom Line: If I wasn't such a lazy ass bastard, the score would be higher.