Hi everyone!

Just wanted to know if anyone of you would have some advice on a good file conversion program, how to, or what to? I have a number of files I am sharing that are homemade music files that I think some people would like. The only problem is they are very large .wav files with a bit rate of about 1.4mbs. This makes for a file size of nearly a Gig for a hour and a half long music file. I would like to shrink that to an mp3 file. I have windows xp and thought maybe I could do that with wmp's musicmatch but with no avail. Could anyone help? Thank you in advance.

wav have bit rates of 1411 kbps, but mp3 between 0 & 320 kbps. SO keep that in mind.

Thank you for the info. LOTR. As you can probably tell I am still learning some of the basics. Any suggestions on converting these files?

The options are lossless such as Apple lossless, ape or FLAC. These lossless compressed formats compress the file to between 50-60% of wav size. Or a lossy format such as mp3. The best converter codec for mp3 is LAME. There's a no. of programs that offer it as a plug-in extra. Or similar is m4a at the higher bit rates (ie- up to 320 kbps.) Also recommended for either mp3 or m4a is VBR (Variable Bit rate) which is a more effective way of converting than CBR (constant bit rate!) It's improves playback quality & is easier on players to read & playback than cbr. ie: Those bits that need the extra bits of info to encode with are used at higher bit rates, but those that are not so important are converted at lower bit rates. Whereas CBR encodes everything at the one rate which results in areas of sound that are not properly represented in sound reproduction due to lack of bit rate afforded to them. Since I'm not a windows user, I could only give you general directions for actual tools to use. So I'll leave it at purely the approach to consider.

People will be much more likely to download smaller files, so I would suggest that after you got the files converted. You find a way to cut them up into smaller pieces, finding a artistname and naming the "songs ?".

If this isn't covers and copyrighted samples. I would suggest you also have a look at

http://www.sectionz.com

It's a site where unknown artists can upload their songs for other people to download. It's also a community for people that enjoy making their own music. You might even find help on the conversion issue there

I'm not a musician myself, but download music from them sometimes. People will not have to pay for downloading your music. downloadspeeds are high, and just maybe some of them share on P2P networks as well

good luck

Thank you again for all your help. I am going to search around and see what I can find. I am probably going to look for the best LAME plug-in I can find. I guess that would be my best option because I have an mp3 player I use all the time and some files won't play on it.
Sleepless, thanx for the attachment to the site. I will definetly use it! Any more feedback is appreciated. Remember I'm still an infant when it comes to this so the more I learn the better.