Converting mp3's to wma in CEP

[Geeman]

Hi all,
I'm trying to convert some mp3's to wma in Cool Edit but I keep getting an error message when doing the batch convert. It goes along the lines of : ' Cannot convert, file in use by another application, close down (said) application and try again'. The thing is I have no other applications running, only cool edit pro and that's exclusively converting the files, i.e. I have no real sessions running.
Any help would be appreciated, I'm a bit of a protools man myself but I can't pass up the editing of Cool Edit. Nevertheless I'm still pretty ignorant.
cheers,
Geeman.

[Change of POETS]

Not exactly sure why that's ocurring, maybe Chris knows for sure...

Regardless... why do you need to convert the file to .wma?

A work-around would be, to first convert the file to .wav from .mp3 so as not to lose any quality. Then convert from .wav to .wma, assuming your only receiving the error when trying to convert from .mp3

Hope that helps.

[dobro]

Well, I'm as ignorant as Geeman, so why would two conversions involve less loss of quality than one conversion?

Geeman, did it work?

[Geeman]

Yeah that worked like a dream. I converted it to wav. I guess the problem came from my ignorance of wma and wav formats. The wav(windows pcm) works the wma doesn't. There was no need for me to convert to wma.
Thanks again, you guys never cease to amaze me.

[Change of POETS]

Originally posted by dobro
Well, I'm as ignorant as Geeman, so why would two conversions involve less loss of quality than one conversion?

Geeman, did it work?

Not necessarily a lesser loss of quality. It all depends on the format of the file...

MP3 files, or MPEG layer 3 files are a highly compressed audio file, used for less storage volume.

A .wav file is a raw audio format, and it is what it is. You'll notice that when saving a track as a .wav file, it results in a large file. One track alone could be up to 40 or 50 mb. There's no compression involved here.

When taking a compressed format file such as .mp3's or .wma's and transfering it to another format which is not compressed, such as a .wav, you won't lose any quality in the process, as it simply just re-encodes the file to a seperate format.

The only time you lose quality on your audio files, is when you transfer them to a lower compressed file format. The only time a .wav file is less quality than another file, is when transfering from a .cda file. Such as a ripper program would do. Even then, the quality lost is minimal, and the average listener could never tell.