I need a free mp3 'expander' (for Win). Wav production wil be very occasional, but I would still like the thing to be reasonably fast. What would you suggest?

Winamp will do this. Its very very fast Get v5.03.

Go to options, preferences, plug-ins, output, then Nullsoft Disk Writer plugin. Make sure you configure where the file ends up and also ensure you are not set on 'repeat'.

Thanks, Philip!

I am using Winamp 5.03 and have Disk Writer plugin, but for some strange reason have assumed (quite unreasonably and without checking ) that it would write in real time, at the same time playing through 'normal' audio output...

Works very well, of course.

Has anyone had less then desirable results using the Disk Writer plugin? For a while I was using this to do some audio conversions for DVD creation, and the resulting wavs sounded like someone turned the treble full-blast or something. It was very harsh. This was in 2.x but I'd be suprised if they really changed all that much in that plugin.

Now for almost everything I do, I import the audio file into Cool Edit Pro. I know, not the free solution you wanted, but I can take pretty much any file and turn it into several other types. More importantly, I can up the bitrate to get 44.1 files up to 48 for DVD. And there's no difference in the result that I can hear.

LAME also has a builtin decoder if you don't need/want a GUI and you're already using it to encode.

Never a problem with it myself - but I wasn't really listening for dodgy sound when v2 was out. Since having the empeg I'm more tuned into how a file sounds.

I think v2 did have some issues which were fixed in later releases.

I've used the disk writer plugin in Winamp 2.x numerous times over the years, and never encountered the problem you describe.

Question: The MP3s that you had the trouble with.... Were they, by any chance, some unusual bit depth or sampling rate? Something other than 16 bit 44.1khz stereo?

Lame is another tool I use daily... Sigh. I should be a bit less lazy looking around, but asking anything here guarantees prompt and competent answer, so one easily takes the route of least effort.

I will compare Winamp and Lame, though, with my ears, verdict 'no difference' hardly means anything...

Sans bugs, any mp3 decoder should produce identical output from the same input. So use whichever is easier for you.

If memory serves, there were some issues with the WinAmp MP3 decoder doing a bad job, but from memory that was around version 1.8 or so. I heard criticisms on and off since then so I don't know (and I imagine they would have fixed this up now). But if I were wanting quality decodes to WAV format then I'd use LAME.

The WinAmp decoder was built for speed, like PKZip.

Have fun,

Paul