Audio File Converter?

[The Damned]

I have some OGG files, and I want to convert them to MP3. Why? Because these OGG files make up about five percent of my total collection, and I would like to be able to keep things the same. So, what program should I use? The shitty trial one I got a long time ago likes to crash randomly, so it's gone. And looking around on Google, I see... lots of programs. Too many to bother going through and trying out.

Any one care to suggest one in particular? I'd like something small, simple and that doesn't pester me with "BUY THE FULL VERSION NOW! CLICK HERE" or any kind of bullshit data/server requests or security problems.

EDIT: One I saw was called Super (http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html), and it seems to be some magical omni-converter, allowing you to convert any audio format to any other audio format, and any video to any other video format. And gifs. And flash. And everything. Sounds a little too good to be true. Anyone ever use it before?

[Schwaltzvald]

I've never used super so I can't comment on that, however I can say that foobar2k does a good job in converting my .OGG files into mp3s for my mp3 player...

[The Unsung Plumber]

I love super, it does really work.(Insert cheezy smile and thumbs up photo.)

/Endorsement

But really, super does work well, I would recommend.

[Drack]

Transcoding loses quality and all that nonsense.

MediaCoder works well.

[Lord.Roderick.i]

I use Smart Audio Converter, it converts:
AC3, VOX, OGG, A-LAW, GMS, G729, MP3, WAV, WMA, MP2, ADPCM, IMA ADPCM, G726, G723, G721 and MPC
It works perfectly fine to me.
The only downside is that costs 20 bucks, but you can pay it with PayPal.

[the_muteKi]

For your purposes you could also use Audacity. Note that it needs LAME in order to actually create those mp3 thingies.
Since I use it anyway for editing and mixing and such it's all I really need.

(It's free, too. Better than NeroWaveEdit.)

[The Damned]

Transcoding loses quality and all that nonsense.

How so, and how much?

[Drack]

Concerning the loss of quality from transcoding:

How so, and how much?

To simplify things a bit, Say an MP3 has 90% the quality of a WAV, and so does an OGG (These things are subjective, but this makes the math easier to explain). You only have an OGG of the song you like, but want an MP3.

When you transcode it, it will encode an MP3 using the OGG as the source data. There really isn't any way to see what the 10% losses for each format have in common, so transcoding basically makes a temporary WAV out of the OGG (no loss here) then converts that WAV to MP3, losing 10% of THAT quality.

So the OGG is still 90% the quality of the original song, but the MP3 is 90% * 90% = 81% of the quality of the original song.

You can reduce this loss by using a higher MP3 bitrate. You can have an MP3 that's about 3x the file size, and keeps, say, 95% of the quality. You'd end up with an MP3 that's 90% * 95% = 85.5% of the original song.

The difference between the OGG encoded and OGG then MP3 transcoded quality is pretty negligible if you're not a complete nut for audio, but it deserves to be brought up in any conversation about transcoding. It's much worse when it comes to video than audio, imo, as lossy video codecs tend to be ... lossier ... than lossy audio codecs.

[jmr]

I've been using Winamp to do this. I can simply right click a song in my playlist, and send it to a plugin called Nullsoft Format Converter (which I'm pretty sure comes with Winamp), and very quickly covert from one format to another. There the rare times, though, that things don't work as they should, so be sure to check the outputted files before deleting the original.
It really comes in handy when I want to convert a higher bitrate file into a lower bitrate OGG for my portable player.

I'm pretty sure that foobar2000 is capable of this as well, but I haven't used it in a while, so I'm not sure.

Drack is right about the transcoding losses. If you do convert your OGGs to MP3s, I'd recommend keeping the original OGG as well.

[The Damned]

The difference between the OGG encoded and OGG then MP3 transcoded quality is pretty negligible if you're not a complete nut for audio
I'm thinking that if you're using MP3 files (or any lossy audio format) you're not really that big of an audiophile.

Any way, I found some of the music in MP3 format and redownloaded them, so the quality will be the same overall. The remaining music I will just convert and live with.