Switch for Switchers
September 1st, 2006If you have been a long time Windows user like me, you mostly probably would have atleast a few music files on your machine in the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. I’d guess it would be more so if you used the Windows Media Player to keep your music collection organized. While it is a format that offers an advantage by using up lesser disk space over the MP3 format by using a proprietary algorithm, its disadvantage is exactly that - the proprietary algorithm makes it unusable on other operating systems due to licensing issues.
iTunes for Windows, which I have been using all along, automatically converts WMA songs to Apple Lossless (AAC) or mp3 formats when added to the library - although, this does not work with iTunes on the Mac. Its the licensing issue again. Unfortunately, there is no indication that this action is not allowed on the Mac. iTunes just stays put and does nothing when you try dragging a WMA file onto the library. The (easy) answer is to use third-party software that does this conversion for you. A better answer would be to altogether switch to an open source format (OGG Vorbis), however this is not an option for me since I use far too many devices that do not support this.
FreeMacWare introduced me to Switch - a sound file conversion application for the Mac that converts most known audio file formats to mp3 (or wav). While Switch is free and provides basic conversion options that would satisfy most users, NCH Swift Sound does offer the advanced Switch Plus application (for $19.40 - a 50% discount until Sep 15) with many more features.
A feature that stands out amidst the standard list of supported encoding rates and optimized CPU usage, is the ability of the application to process up to 32,000 files in a single batch process.
Switch is also available for Windows and Linux operating systems.
