Edit: This is not the Pro version (I thought at first it was or a new version) 
 
Sonnox Codex Toolbox - £35 
http://www.sonnox.com/pub/plugins/products/codec/codectoolbox.html
 
The Pro version looks like a good tool, this... 
 

Steve,
 
Honest question, honest reply...
 
No, you do not need this unless you want to throw away the price of admission. You can do this all for free. Think I might have posted this before, but what the hey...
 
I'd advise to download dbPoweramp to get all the codecs you could ever want, continually updated. I registered the thing years ago so my mp3 encoder is still active. They let you keep a freeware for all other formats, but the mp3 encoder goes down after a month. Then you use the open source LAME encoder with LameXP as the front end. Covers all the bases and has the batch processing capability.
 
Respect to the Frau guys for inventing mp3, but have some reservations about how they strangled out the little guys trying to offer a free encoder for mp3.
 
My opinion...  Ages ago in the land before LAME, the Frau dudes had a monopoly if you wanted quality conversion. We used the infamous "fatboy wave" to test for potential conversion artifacts and adjusted settings accordingly to avoid garbage in the squeeze.
 
This day and age, there may or may not be any advantage to Frau over LAME, but if there is, only a bat can hear it.
 
Go for the excellent free stuff and take your girl out for the 35 yen saved.
 
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm
 
http://lamexp.sourceforge.net/
 
http://lame.sourceforge.net/
 
John
 
 
 

I use dbPoweramp at work just as an MP3 (and...yuck...occasional 8bit Ulaw) converter. Works great. But my dbPA doesn't do near what the Sonnox does. Not even close. This does way more than simply convert files. Is there a dbPA upgrade I'm missing??

Hi John, 
Thanks for the info.
 
When I first posted this I thought is was a new version of the Sonnox Pro version.
When I reread the info and found the comparison chart (link below) I realized it was not.
http://www.sonnox.com/pub/plugins/products/compare-codecs.htm
 
With the Pro version you can audition the different conversions which seems like it something really useful for tweaking a mix for SoundCloud or iTunes.  The Toolbox looks more like a glorified tag editor.
While the Pro version looks cool, it's not cool enough for me to shell out the approximately $430+ 
At least not at the moment.

Steve, you're welcome brother.
 
Ol Pal, don't see any possible advantage of paying for Sonnox over my free setup that does any state of art conversion needed.
 
Looks like you used these programs and have some in depth knowledge about them. What am I missing in this. What possible advantage can Sonnox deliver over an elegant freeware matrix.
 
Wanting only to learn here. Your advice is appreciated.
 
Best to all of you,
 
John

With the exception of "real time" auditioning between full bandwidth input and compressed output most all of the most useful features of its "big brother" are there in one single, much cheaper, package. I'd use it daily in my commercial broadcast use just for the meta data alone. YMMV.

Thanks Ol Pal. Most of my use is simple convert and tag, so keeping track of data is rarely a need. Can see where it would be valuable in hi volume applications.

Got it simply because of the Tagging thing and real time audition , worth every penny imho .... i have soundforge but this is so more fun to use , quik ...