Best way to convert from 48K to 44.1?

[laptoppop]

There's GOT to be a better way!

Right now I'm working on a big project which was tracked at 24-bit, 48Khz. I'm mixing it down in Cakewalk Pro Audio 9. I'm then exporting the wave file. I then convert it to 16-bit 44.1 Khz using N-Track.

I'm satisfied with the quality of the conversion (and I'm real picky), but the time involved is killing me. N-Track takes about 7 minutes on my machine (1.6 Ghz P4) to convert a 3.5 minute song.

Is there a better way? Are there any good freeware programs out there that could help (my budget is toast right now)?

Thanks,
-lee-

[TexRoadkill]

Just to clarify, the problem is the processing time?

[laptoppop]

Right - the primary problem is processing time.

The ideal solution would be something that could do a bunch of files at once very quickly.

The next to ideal solution would be something that could do one at a time very quickly.

The still-much-better-than-now would be a batch process that would run slowly (but I could go to bed and let it run).

Right now, I have a slow process that only accepts one file at a time.

-lee-

[RWhite]

Don't really have an answer, rather I have a similar situation. I do projects in Cakewalk 9 @ 24 bit 44.1. My hardware will handle up to 48 but I have not found the hassle Vs quality difference to be worth it. I then export to a stereo file, then use Sound Forge 5 to convert from 24 to 16 bit. Sound Forge does have an optional batch file processor that can be downloaded (by registered owners) for doing unattended conversions of large numbers of files. But I don't do enough work to make that necessary.

[chessrock]

Just record everything at 44.1 to start with.

[TexRoadkill]

One thing to consider is that all sample rate conversions are not the same. There are good and crappy convertor algorythms. I sure wouldn't want to ruin weeks worth of work just to save a few minutes of file conversion.

CoolEditPro does do batch file conversions but it's not free. Is there a software soup kitchen in your town

[Sangram]

Try Soundengine. you'll find it at Software Music Machine (www.hitsquad.com/smm).

Oh, and let me know how it is, please. I use it for my own stuff because I have to record at 48 because the stupid Soundblaster hardware converter craps out my system. But I can't make out the difference in encoding times, really. My system does a 2 minute song in about 30 seconds, SoundEngine takes maybe 20 seconds but that's about the difference.

[Alchemist3k]

I record at 24bit 48khz and with dithering on my pc takes about one min to convert a 7 min song using Cubase. Get Wavelab or something and try that.

[laptoppop]

SoundEngine looks very interesting. I'll have to keep trying to work it out -- I downloaded the zip file, but there's no installer. I unzipped everything I could (some files were apparently japanese filenames and would not unzip on my system)into a single directory. The program appears to run, but a lot of functions won't work.

I'd love to get Wavelab or something like that - but the budget says "later".

On the other hand, I found an interesting program last night - ssrc from http://shibatch.sourceforge.net/ that looks like it will work for me. Its a command line utility. There is apparently a GUI frontend available, but I have not been successful yet in downloading it. However, I'm fine with command line stuff.

It appeared to work great - one bug, I can't use "gaussian" noise distribution - but other than that, it converted 9 sound files (about 40 minutes worth) in about 4 minutes, and the output sounds good.

Thanks for the help everyone!
-lee-