WMAs and Macs

[eschiss1]

Joy. It's not that difficult to play WMA files on a Mac, even a recent Macintosh with the Lion operating system, but should one want to convert them into MP3s or AACs, apparently there are no good (freeware) options (a pretty good shareware option exists, to be fair).

Please consider this a plea for more postings of mpegs (mp3s, aacs) and fewer of wma files, generally speaking, as reason permits, as necessary...
This seemed appropriate to this forum as it has to do with download files specifically but can of course! be moved to the appropriate subforum (or deleted) as appropriate -etc.

Eric.

[eschiss1]

It seems all the more inconsistent as some of these WMA files can be converted to MP3 format and stored on a player and some (the Gordon Crosse works) apparently can't - this could be for copyright reasons, at a guess, though the specific reason they can't is technical (some incompatibility in the #0 track that causes the program to throw up its hands immediately) and may even be specific to the program I'm using to convert them (the only acceptable one I've found for the Mac, though).

[jimmosk]

Eric, I've never had any problem converting WMAs to MP3s on my (relatively old - OS 10.4) Mac with the freeware version of Switch, available here: http://www.nch.com.au/switch/index.html

[eschiss1]

Thanks- having a 10.7 Mac introduces some self-inflicted problems in its own right (programs I need for work no longer do) - will check it out

[eschiss1]

Good news: it works and is a more "intuitive" alternative to the option-overfilled (but underexplained- and also shareware rather than freeware) ffmpegx I was using. Bad news? The four Crosse wma files (at least one of which chosen for test does play - well, partway, will see if it plays through, haven't done a full test to see if the files are actually ok!!- in WMP...) ...
still don't seem to convert, for some reason. Maybe I still chose an option wrong. Something for me to take up with the person who uploaded them, though. Thanks much for pointing me by way of the program, seems useful (and freeware apparently - well, free; I assume it's also freeware at the programming end of things, but I haven't done that in -quite- some time anyway ) !

[jimmosk]

Well, if you still can't get them to convert, I can always send you the Crosse MP3 versions that my copy of Switch didn't have a problem making (albeit slowly)...