Needs at least three basic functions to compete with XLD and Max. Other apps do these, too, but XLD and max are free like MHAC.
1) multiple output formats in one batch/process - I almost always convert to two formats.
2) results be folder formatted - e.g. files end up in Artist/Album or however user wants, including a folder for each format.
3) select folder and not files - I often want to convert several folders at once. Best would be to select these folders (with your app knowing only to add the audio format files) and not have to drill into each folder and then need to select the files themselves - talk about a PITA!).
Absolutely amazing bit of software and my ultimate choice for converting my audio files. Never had any problems. could be a nicer, more modern UI but thats not very important, especially when its free! Thank you sooo much guys! I don't review stuff but had to leave one for this. Definitely recommended :D
I am having much better luck Converting a single Flac file and Cue Set to Separate Track mp3s with this Client MUCH better than X Lossless Decoder and xAct. XLD Transcodes the first 10 files and then fails for the rest. xAct does beanz. This app seems to work GREAT!!!
Too bad it doesn't Transcode to mp4s or Apple .
I'm a long-time and regular user of XLD and have come to appreciate its features and versatility. I've come to depend on it for yielding the best possible audio results.
I was recently asked my opinion of MediaHuman Audio Converter for compressing flac to AAC/m4a. So I did some A/B comparisons. The results were rather dramatic. For comparison I use Spek, as well as the Plot Spectrum feature in Audacity.
True to form, XLD yields audio spectrum results that are as close to the original flac as one could hope for (btw, this is only possible if you compress to AAC - mp3 isn't capable of that).
The conversion with MH yields results which would lead one to believe it's actually using an mp3 codec instead of AAC, with the sharp 20kHz cutoff characteristic of mp3.
If you plot spectrum of the vast majority of iTunes Store purchases you'll find that the spectrum extends to a minimum of 21kHz, and many extend to 22kHz. Granted, the human ear can't hear above 20kHz anyway, and that was the original rational used by the standards bodies when they came up with mp3 in 1993 in the first place. For that reason mp3 filters everything above 20kHz. But it was long ago discovered that the original thinking was flawed because it doesn't take into spacial characteristics (sound stage) and high frequency harmonic distortion, etc.
Part of the reason AAC sounds better than mp3 is it has superior audio spectrum. AAC is a lossy format, but nearly as lossy as mp3. MH eliminates that AAC advantage altogether by, apparently, imposing its own 20kHz filter on AAC conversions, and I can't condemn that in strong enough words. Regardless of how nice the user interface and how easy it is to use, I won't be using or recommending it.
For those who are still compressing to mp3 (which is a really foolish thing to do in this day and age -- mp3 was abandoned years ago by the standards bodies in favor of AAC because of mp3's mediocre performance characteristics), MH might be a simple and easy to use option. But again, you really shouldn't be compressing to mp3 in the first place, unless you're one of the few who still has an "mp3 player" that doesn't support AAC.
This application is easy enough to use, however it needs more conversion types, for example, it can not handle the AIFC file format that is common to OSX.
Nice app. Too bad it can't handle loading larger number of files. I need to convert a few thousand titles from iTunes library and this app takes forever to load them, way over my patience levels, so I'm force to kill it. In comparison, Switch will handle thousands of files in a matter of seconds.
Love it. By why does it have to be 80.5 MB? It doesn’t contain extra languages or a Universal Binary, so it’s bigger than all other such apps by half.
Anyway, it’s a lovely interface and has more options than iSonics, which costs $10 and doesn’t handle CUE files, but far fewer options than XLD. But, I much prefer MediaHuman’s interface to XLD’s lack of one. So, from now on, MH is my converter of choice when I don’t need the advanced options of XLD.
Thanks again to the developer for offering it as freeware.
nice try but compared to iffmpeg is this crap...
it is just a GUI for ffmpeg but with less features...
if you encode Video and do the same with other and use the same setting most time you get better results with other ...
for me the best tool for this is iffmpeg...
try before you buy & you will see what i mean!
and i have the same Problems as GeoProf...
I really like MediaHuman and appreciate that its developer offers it as freeware. However, there’s a major problem with the last couple of versions (1.8.0 & 1.8.1): On both my OS 10.6.8 iMac and 10.8.2 MacBook Pro, with MediaHuman set in the preferences and/or with the GUI’s ‘Format’ button to output ALAC, it ignored those settings and transcoded my 5 different FLAC source files (created with either XLD, iSonics, Audacity or Max) to AAC instead. I know that ALAC and AAC have the same extension (.m4a), but It was immediately apparent that MediaHuman’s output was lossy AAC rather than lossless ALAC because they were around 80% smaller than the source files. I confirmed this by analyzing the output with MediaInfo, VideoSpec and Invisor, all of which listed the new files’ codec as AAC.
Has anyone else experienced erroneous file type output with MediaHuman?
Media Human sound utilities are SO COOL, so well designed and so beautifully developed ... and this one doesn't disappoint.
These guys are amazing. And check out YouTube to MP3 if you haven't already got it.
Used to use AudialHub, once it was killed I never thought I would find something so great... I was wrong.
MediaHuman Audio Converter is the best audio converter I have run into. It converts everything I throw at it and incredibly fast!
Thank you!
It took all of 5 minutes for me to transfer a playlist in iTunes, convert it into a format compatible with my phone (wma), and then load the songs onto the phone. All done by drag and drop. I used to have to do this on my PC and it was much more involved process.
WoW.... amazing Audio Converter !!!!
I used before Switch but this one is for me better !
Now with AC-3 Support !!!
Dev you Rock & i wish you a great 2012 !!!
Keep on the fantastic Work....#
Your other APP's are also worth to have a look !
Thank You !!! & Respect for very quick response and Bug Fix !
Seems nice enough, but it doesn’t support DTS or AC-3 audio streams. I need MediaHuman to extract DTS audio streams from movie files and convert them to AC-3 (Dolby Digital) so I could mux them with a video stream to make DVDs. Oh well.
O.K., per the Dev's advice I DL'ed the 1.4.2 version from their site and it worked perfectly for extracting an audio file out of an m4v video file. I'm sure it can do many other cool things and therefore it earns a solid 4.5 stars from me. Cheers!
Rather good audio converter. Still needs a lot of work - tag editing, ogg, flac ..
I also noticed it sometimes didn't copied the original metatag info.
Great support from the developer. I sent in a request for support for .amr format files, and heard back from the developer within a couple of days that he had added support for .amr plus some other formats. And, it would be out in the next release. Sure enough, a couple days later, a new release with support for the added formats.
This is a great new addition to audio converters - easy to use, free, frequent improvements, and free!
Very nice, have been using XLD which does a good job but you can only change conversion settings, destination, etc in the preferences which is inconvenient. MHAC allows settings to be changed more easily which is a big plus. Only thing I would ding is lack of a VBR option. Overall VERY nice and kudos to MediaHuman, they make good apps!
