Saturday, December 31, 2011

MP3 Player

I picked up an inexpensive MP3 player and wanted to load some of my music to them. I had a player in the past, but it stopped working a couple of months ago. I used to bring it to the gym to use while I worked out. It does seem to make the time go by faster.

Getting songs to that old one was pretty easy. I just opened Windows Media Player, clicked on Sync, mounted my MP3 player, and dragged my songs to it. This time it did not work. Oh, the music went over fine. They just would not play.

The new MP3 player only plays MP3 files. It does not have software built in to handle the WMA format from Windows Media Player. Somehow I had to get all those WMA files converted to MP3 so I could move them to the new player. I can’t complain about the MP3 player—it only cost $6.50 (see http://bit.ly/sVONxT).

I located a freebie called Switch Sound File Converter that does a job doing just that. And it will convert into other formats as well. You can find it at http://www.nch.com.au/switch/index.html.

A little more digging and I discovered an option in Windows Media Player. When ripping a CD you can choose to have it rip in MP3 format instead of WMA! (Organize > Options > Rip Music > Format MP3)

So if you intend on getting your music to an MP3 player, rip as MP3 and you can listen on both your PC and your MP3 player.