Converting ogg file to mp3 format with Sound Converter

It’s the holiday season. The English summer rain serves only to sharpen the anticipation of the foreign sun that you will be enjoying in the not too distant future.
There is only one problem. How do you take your music collection with you when it’s all in ogg format and you don’t have a handy Android device to transfer it onto.

Step forward Sound Converter – another in the seemingly endless supply of really useful open source utilities for Linux.

NOTE – I’ve tried this on both Ubuntu and Mint and, as you’d expect, the steps are the same. The screenshots in this post are taken from Mint because the novelty still hasn’t worn off yet 🙂

Getting Sound Converter

Open Synaptic Package Manager and search for soundconverter

Check the box, hit the apply button, and watch the appropriately coloured progress bar.

If you now look in the Sound & Video menu, Sound Converter will be sitting there…

Sound converter, in glorious green and grey

Setting Preferences

We need to tell Sound Converter what we’re converting to and where we want the results to go.
So, open Sound Converter and go to the Edit menu and select Preferences

Click the Choose button and select the directory you want your converted files written to.

Being the tidy sould that I am ( ignore Deb sniggering in the background), I also checked Replace messy characters.

Finally, set the Format – MP3 in my case.

Now hit Close and your preferences are saved.

Converting files

Now we just need to point Sound Converter at some ogg files.

Hit the Add Folder button and select the folder that contains the files you want to convert.

Dancing Queeeennn....oh, I didn't see you there. Ahem!

Now hit the Convert button and away you go…

Once the minty green progress bar disappears, you simply have to copy the resultant mp3 files to your portable music player and you’ll always be within touching distance of some classic Euro Pop.
Right, I’m off to buy some sun cream.