Windows only 
This is one of those apps you have to be careful with because the installer tries to throw some third-party software on your machine (details at the end of the post), but the end result is worth it. The Free MP3 WMA Converter from Koyote is capable of converting your entire audio library from one format to another.
The interface is very simple as you can see in the screenshot below. All you have to do is drag and drop music files from Windows Explorer into the “files to convert” area, select your output format, and click the Convert button. It really is that easy. How fast is it? I tested it with a few different songs and converted them to various different formats. I never had a conversion take longer than 20 seconds for a single song. That means it can process at least 180 songs per hour.
I’m sure the big question is what formats does it support? Here’s a list of filetypes that can be inputted, and then what formats they can be converted to:
- Input formats: MP3, WAV, WMA, Ogg, AAC, APE, Flac, M4A, AC3
- Output formats: MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, APE, FLAC
Overall my experience with this app was really good once I got past the installation. It was simple enough to use that I think anyone would be able to figure it out in no time at all, and it processed the audio files at a reasonable pace.
Free MP3 WMA Converter Homepage (Windows only; freeware)
IMPORTANT: During the install there are TWO checkboxes you’ll want to remove otherwise it will change your search engine and also install a toolbar. It will also try to install a 30-day trial of “Easy Mp3 Wma Cutter” and a “Free CD Ripper” app at the end of the installer. Just don’t click through too fast and you should be fine.
I’ve been using a program called Aaslund Soft Simple Audio Converter that does the same thing, but doesn’t pull any of this sneaky installation stuff.
I’m a bit disappointed. Software that installs junk like this should get no publicity at ALL, even if you point out what you need to click during the install. Its just NOT user friendly and I’m sure a majority of people will just skip on by and install all this junk on their PCs. There are other free solutions out there, such as foobar2000 and dbPowerAmp. These may not be explicitly designed just to convert tracks, but they don’t hoist toolbars on the users PCs.
In some cases I do agree with you, but there are some apps that I think is worth it if they do a good job with the task they’re trying to accomplish. Digsby is another good example, and up until their recent events I was fine with them presenting a half dozen different toolbars for me to install during the setup routine. Other people are fine with that as well since the product is so good. Unfortunately they were also doing other “less obvious” schemes that users weren’t very aware of, and that’s ultimately what turned me off of their product.
…and for everything else, there’s BonkEnc. It can handle pretty much all of these codecs and is FOSS, so there’s no crapware to deal with.
[portableapps.com]
winLAME – An open source project hosted on Sourceforge. Does most, if not all, that BonkEnc does, and looks much nicer doing it. Windows only as far as I know.
[winlame.sourceforge.net]
Nice! I bookmarked that and will likely write about it. The interface looks simple enough for those that don’t want to be confused by all the different settings that a lot of differnet apps offer.
It says that it can convert itunes to mp3 but it is not working for me. Do you know of any free converter that will convert these itunes files?