Member Avatar for erms

Hi,
Is there a free "command line" utility to convert wav files to MP3 (MID will also do)? I need to put some of my wav files on my server, but these are huge...
Command line is needed because the conversion will be done by another software, which will also FTP these files.
Thanks

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As asked: converting WAV to MP3 from the command line is straightforward; converting WAV to MIDI is not the same thing. MIDI describes note events (score data), not recorded audio, so "WAV→MIDI" requires audio‑to‑MIDI transcription tools and only works reliably for very simple, monophonic material. For general file‑size reduction and server delivery, MP3 (or AAC/OGG) is the right target.

Two solid, free CLI choices for Windows are LAME (a dedicated MP3 encoder) and FFmpeg (a general converter that uses libmp3lame). LAME is lightweight and fast for straight WAV→MP3 encoding; FFmpeg is more flexible (resample, normalize, convert containers, batch processing). Both can be scripted and return nonzero exit codes on error, which is useful for automation.

Example commands (Windows):

lame -V2 "input.wav" "output.mp3"

rem Batch (in a .bat file; use single % for interactive cmd)
for %%f in ("*.wav") do lame -V2 "%%f" "%%~nf.mp3"

ffmpeg -i "input.wav" -codec:a libmp3lame -qscale:a 2 "output.mp3"

rem Batch
for %%f in ("*.wav") do ffmpeg -i "%%f" -codec:a libmp3lame -qscale:a 2 "%%~nf.mp3"

Practial notes for automation: put the encoder executable on PATH or call it by full path and quote paths with spaces; capture stdout/stderr and check the process exit code; use VBR settings (-V2 in LAME, -qscale:a 2 in FFmpeg) for good quality/size tradeoffs or -b:a 128k for fixed bitrate; reduce sample rate (-ar 22050) or force mono (-ac 1) to save space for speech. As pointed out, Exact Audio Copy is a good GUI ripper; and referenced GUI converters — those work for interactive use but for headless, scriptable workflows stick with LAME or FFmpeg. If MIDI output is essential, plan for dedicated transcription software and expect imperfect results.

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Member Avatar for hughv

I haven't used the command line option, but think Exact Audio Copy will do what you want:

See the "Links" section for tutorials.

Member Avatar for erms

Hi,
Thanks, I'll test this and post here.
Thanks

Member Avatar for cguan_77

check out this site..

Member Avatar for Geneviev

I use Audio Converter Studio to convert diffrerent audio I have to mp3

Here is an article describing the process of convertion.
It's pretty simple!

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