The ubiquitous MP3 format and Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) both offer good sound quality and portability. However, not all digital media players are universal in their support for both MP3 and WMA files. For example, Apple's celebrated iTunes application and its corresponding iPod portable media player offer support for an array of consumer and professional audio formats.

WMA MP3 Converter for Windows

There are many applications that will convert WMA files to MP3, or convert MP3 to WMA.

NoteBurner Audio Converter

Plarform: Windows XP, Vista Price: USD 34.95

NoteBurner Audio Converter applies virtual CD burning technology to simulate the burning and ripping process. By doing so it converts DRM protected audio files, such as m4p, m4a, m4b, wma and audio book, and unprotected audio, such as wma, mp3, wav, rax, mp4, ra, snd, aac, ogg, aa and aif, etc. to mp3, wav and wma.The interface is relatively clear-cut, providing buttons to select songs, as well as drag and drop file selection. 

Xilisoft Audio Converter is an easy-to-use audio converter, which can convert between many popular audio formats including MP3, WAV, WMA, MP4, M4A, MP2, VQF, APE, OGG, AAC and FLAC etc. And it can also extract audio tracks from AVI, MPEG, WMV etc.

Xilisoft Audio Converter

Platform: Windows XP Price: USD 23.95

The DRM Music Converter – DRM WMA to MP3

Keep in mind that these format conversion tools are not intended, and in the majority of cases are simply unable, to bypass the Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes employed by Microsoft, Apple and the recording industry to protect copyright and restrict the use of purchased audio files.

But there are some software solutions that claim to get around this problem. NoteBurner Audio Converter promises to legally convert DRM-protected WMA files to unprotected MP3 format at high speed, with CD sound quality. 

SoundTaxi Professional

Platform: Windows XP, Vista Price: USD 26.99

Tunebite Premium offers to record your copy-protected WMA files as they are being played, then saves the recordings as unprotected MP3 audio files you can use anywhere.

M4A might not play on MP3 players other than iPod or any non-Apple platform. With NoteBurner M4P Converter, you can convert M4A to MP3, as well as converting M4A to unprotected WMA or WAV. 

Converting M4A to MP3 with NoteBurner Audio Converter

NoteBurner M4A to MP3 Converter program is compatible with Windows XP and Vista operating systems. Please read the following System Requirements to see what you may need and what you should note when using NoteBurner Audio Converter.

NoteBurner Audio Converter

Plarform: Windows XP, Vista Price: USD 34.95

BlackBerry Pearl supports AMR, MP3, MIDI and AAC + audio formats. For users who have built up iTunes music library with large quantity of songs, they may wish to be able to play these songs on their BlackBerry Peal. NoteBurner provides a solution to convert AAC, M4P, M4B and M4A to MP3 for playback on BlackBerry Pearl.

NoteBurner Audio Converter

Plarform: Windows XP, Vista Price: USD 34.95

Zune is Microsoft's music and entertainment platform that provides an end-to-end solution for Connected Entertainment. The Zune experience includes a 30GB digital media player, the Zune Marketplace music service, and a foundation for an online community that will enable music fans to discover new music.

NoteBurner Audio Converter

Plarform: Windows XP, Vista Price: USD 34.95

If you have moved from Apple's iPod to Microsoft's Zune, you probably have some songs that you purchased from the iTunes Music Store that you would like to move to the new device.

There's no direct way to copy files from an iPod to a Zune. Files purchased from iTunes music store will not play on a Zune, just as files purchased from Zune Marketplace won't play on an iPod. Using NoteBurner Audio Converter, you can get any MP3 files stored on an iPod onto a Zune.

NoteBurner installs a virtual CD-RW, it helps you burn any unprotected or DRM protected M4P, M4a, WMA music files onto the virtual CD, rips tracks on the virtual CD, encodes tracks onto MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, OGG or FLAC music files. It can repeat this audio converting procedure until your whole music collection is done.

Since the virtual CD emulates your computer RAM and hard disk as erasable CD-RW drive (Virtual CD-RW), the converting speed is faster than any other m4p to mp3 conversion programs.

All three editions of Tunebite can convert wma, m4p, m4b, m4a and aa formats to mp3, wma, ogg, m4a and wav. If you wish to convert m4p to mp3, Tunebite would require you install lame_enc.dll codec first. Lame_enc.dll is the codec for encoding mp3 file. (Read the review of Tunebite Premium audio converter)

Click the Search button in the “Options-> Audio-> Audio format and encoder settings” pane, Tunebite will prompt you to the website of Google, and you will see the auto-searched results, click the first one to visit the www.free-codec.com website to download the mp3 lame codec.

Once the download of mp3 lame codec is finished, you may import the mp3 lame codec to Tunebite. The downloaded file is in zip format, so you shall unzip the mp3 lame codec.

Then you may click the Import button to introduce the mp3 lame codec to Tunebite. Now you see the MP3 option is enable for selecting.

Select mp3 as output format, modify the bitrate setting and other settings for mp3, and then you can confirm all the settings and prompt Tunebite to start converting songs to mp3.

NoteBurner Audio Converter is one of the best DRM converter that can convert M4P to MP3, WMA and WAV. It does not support OGG audio format yet. If you only need to convert M4P to MP3, WMA or WAV, NoteBurner Audio Converter is your best choice. . (Download NoteBurner Audio Converter)