Need to convert audio files in order to play them in your mobile device? Want to rip an audio CD to your computer? Need to make ringtones from music files? Look no further than these four great utilities.
MP3 Toolkit
MP3 Toolkit is a newly launched powerful suite of free music editing tools that allow users to convert between audio formats, rip CD disks, edit tags, cut and merge MP3 files and record MP3 from the mike.
The free MP3 Toolkit applications include:
- MP3 Converter lets the user convert one or more audio files to a format of choice which can be MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, FLAC, AC3, AAC or AMR. In addition to the audio format, one can customize other settings such as bitrate, rate, audio channel and destination folder. However, the biggest annoyance of this tool is you cannot select multiple files at once to add to the converter. You either add folders or individual files one at a time.
- CD to MP3 Ripper is designed for anyone who wants to make backup copies of tracks from an audio disk. For this the application offers four audio formats and different options to customize the output such as bitrate, maximal VBR bitrate, encoding quality and destination folder.
- MP3 Tag Editor provides a handy interface to edit tags of an MP3 file. One can add or edit a song title, artist, album, year, comment and track number. Also it's possible to define a file name format ([Artist] - [Title], [Title] - [Artist] and more), directory format ([Current Folder]\[Artist]\[Album]\) and enable additional file rename options (Append Bitrate to Filename, Append Mode to Filename).
- MP3 Merger is a simple tool for merging two audio files into one. All the user needs to do is select files in MP3, WAVE, FLAC or OGG, specify the output settings such as bitrate, rate, audio channel and output folder and start the process by clicking the Merge MP3 File Now button.
- MP3 Cutter lets the user cut an audio file to remove unnecessary parts. One may want to do this in many situations, for example, in order to make a custom ringtone for the smart phone. The application allows customizing the output settings such as bitrate, rate and channels.
- MP3 Recorder is designed to help users to record any sound from the microphone to standard MP3 format without any limitation on length. Again the user can select sample rate, bitrate and channels.
Helium Audio Converter
Helium Audio Converter is an easy to use audio converter that can work with all popular audio formats including FLAC, AAC, MP3, M4A, MP4, MPC, OGG, WAV and WMA. Simply drag and drop files to the interface or use the traditional browse and select method to add files for conversion. The main screen will show you details about the files added such as bitrate, file format, artist, album name and track from meta-tags.
Conversion settings are on the lower part of the main screen. You can choose either a constant bitrate or a variable bitrate, and optionally normalize the audio volume.
Sometimes ill-informed users may try to convert lesser quality audio into a higher quality format, such as increasing bitrate from 128kbps to 256kbps, hoping that it would improve their music. Helium Audio Converter can prevent such useless activities by warning the user when the output quality chosen is better than the source. It would have been nice if the program offered similar warnings when users are about to degrade the quality of their music files.
For FLAC and MP3 formats, Helium Audio Converter can also analyze the files and report on errors. However, the program doesn’t tell what errors it found, which doesn’t help much.
Freemake Audio Converter
Freemake Audio Converter accepts over 40 audio file formats and converts to MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, AAC, M4A, and OGG, and can prepare files for playback on various portable media players. It can convert audio files into M4A and M4R files for iPad, iPhone, and iPod and automatically adds converted files to the iTunes library. Several ready-made presets for each supported output file format are present and the ability to create a custom preset with the adjustment of bitrate, audio channels, and sample rate is also possible. The program can combine multiple audio files into a single file.
Freemake Audio Converter is also capable of extracting the audio soundtrack from different video formats, such as DVD, MP4, AVI, MPEG, H.264, MKV, DIVX, MOV, WMV, VOB, 3GP, RM, QT, and FLV.
Hanso Converter
Hanso Converter offers support for multiple popular formats including MP3, MP4/M4A, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, Bonk and FLAC. Aside from audio conversion, Hanso Converter also rips CDs.
The key difference between Hanso Converter and other audio converting software mentioned above is that the former offers greater control on audio conversion settings. Once you select the encoder (LAME or FLAC or WMA) you can adjust the encoder settings such as set maximum and minimum VBR bitrate, set control bits, enable CRC, set low-pass and high-pass filters, etc, depending on the capabilities of the encoder.
IDv1 and IDv2 tags editing is allowed. You can also plug into a free online CD database to access track information such as artist, album, year etc.
Related: 5 Multi Threaded Free Video Converters for Faster Conversion
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