[tripletaker]

What's a good program (preferably free) to convert from a high bitrate to a lower one? When I was using Windows I used a program called dbpoweramp which worked wonderfully... but now that I've switched to Mac, I am clueless.

Also, what program would you use to change from real media to mp3 or wma to mp3, etc...

And what can I use to edit mp3s? Something like Adobe Audition.

Thanks.

[bmedina]

iTunes will convert between mp3, aac, and wav (and a few others). Note that converting between two lossy formats is not recommended.

Real and WMA are not free or open platforms, so the available tools are not as widely available. Generally, you'll use Quicktime-based tools for audio/video conversion, so Quicktime Pro is a good tool. Real has a free Quicktime component for encoding, but not decoding (thus, no format conversion is possible). A company called flip4mac makes good WMA tools, but none of them are free.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by tripletaker

And what can I use to edit mp3s? Something like Adobe Audition.
Thanks.

Depending on exactly what sort of editing you'll be doing, Audacity may suit your needs.

[jamil5454]

Another vote for Audacity.

[tripletaker]

Audacity is pretty good... the only think I don't like about it is it takes about 14 minutes to convert a 60 minute audio from 160 bitrate to 64...

Wish it was faster, but oh well... any other suggestions?