wma conversion for voice recorder

2.3: proj.addn/wma conversion for voice recorder:

. on the mac I have vista running in a vmware;
I don't like to give it much access,
so there's a single folder esp'ly for vista jobs .
. I'm noticing I have wma's waiting for conversion;
these are [win'media audio].files from the voice recorder .
. there's also a converter program
but I'm assuming that's the one that turned out to be nagware;
I need to find some openware;
and the first thing I find is the WMA-Into-MP3 page:
"(

You can convert WMA files (at least, those without DRM protection)
into the more universally-portable MP3 format using the free,
open-source MPlayer and lame packages.
These are available for many platforms,
particularly the "big 3": Windows, Mac OS/X, and GNU/Linux.

1. http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html
Install the above-mentioned software onto your computer,
using either the source or precompiled binaries for your platform.
2
Convert the WMA files into an intermediate format,
the space-wasting but lossless WAV (wave) standard:
mplayer -vo null -vc dummy -af resample=44100 -ao pcm "Song 1.wma"
3
Now convert the result of the previous command
(stored as audiodump.wav by default) into MP3:
lame audiodump.wav "Song 1.mp3"
4
That's it! Continue the process for each file you wish to convert.
See Tips for some ways to streamline and/or improve this method.
5
When complete, each directory you visited
will have the last file converted still stored as audiodump.wav.
You will probably want to delete these obsolete files
to conserve space using the rm (Unix) or del (Windows) command.
6
You may also want to delete the original wma files,
after verifying that the quality of the resulting mp3 songs is acceptable.
edit Tips
You can write a script to enable searching your entire hard drive for wma files
and converting them automatically.
See the source article for examples.
This one was written (on Windows/Cygwin) for the best space savings,
using the lowest possible quality setting for the MP3 output:

#!/bin/bash
for file in "$@"; do mplayer \
-vo null \
-vc dummy \
-af resample=44100 \
-ao pcm:file="${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.wav" \
"$file"
lame -V9 "${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.wav" "${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.mp3"
rm -f "${file%%.[Ww][Mm][Aa]}.wav"
done

)
. I was concerned that the mplayer doc's
didn't seem to agree with wikihow's suggested param's:
"( -vo null -vc dummy -af resample=44100 -ao pcm ) .

. the mac download has the player wrapped in a gui
and not only doesn't the gui map to every function,
but the location of the program is not obvious .
. it has this advice:
"(

Using the command line MPlayer
. to use the command line version of mplayer
without any hussle,
we suggest you create a link to the binary file
contained in the MPlayer OSX.app bundle.
. just type the following into your terminal:
ln -s /Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer
/usr/local/bin/mplayer
This will create a symlink to the mplayer command line binary,
and place it into /usr/local/bin.

)
. however this didn't seem to work;
-- at least it's open
http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/
To get a copy, issue following command in the terminal:
svn co svn://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/mplayerosx/trunk/ mplayerosx

. so then I'm looking for more openware:

Dave's Answer:
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/convert_mac_wma_audio_files_to_mp3.html

"( under Mac OS X, there is Music Man and Sound Grinder,
but my favorite tool is the Australian-produced Switch,
http://www.nch.com.au/switch/
which also has a Windows version available.)

. I tried that (wma to ogg(qual'level=1) )
and it quit unexpectedly .

. finally, I double-checked the converter I had waiting for vista:
and found it's not that old nagware
but the openware" winFF:
http://code.google.com/p/winff/

. this is doing well on vista:
letting you graphically select batches
and then converting them to mp3 or ogg .
. its prefered output.folder is vista`user`doc's
rather than source folder .

. I'm going back to the wikihow.com page,
and update it with my better solution .
[@] co.net/wikihow.com/Convert-Unprotected-WMA-Files-Into-MP3-Files

. help is in the [forums] and a pdf .
http://www.biggmatt.com/forums/

. booking for how to halve size of output:
http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-doc.html#SEC11

# To have a constant quality (but a variable bitrate),
use the option '-qscale n'
when 'n' is between 1 (excellent quality) and 31 (worst quality)
-qscale 16

no I need to
lower 160 kb/s, or 44,100 hz
mp3 does work
try audio bitrate 64

todo:
. something about -qscale 16 didn't change anything .
I started trying the next param but had to quit .