As the title states, I need to convert a collection of ALAC files to lossy WMAs and keep the original files (got a cheap brown Zune). dBPowerAmp is the only software I'm aware of that will handle this conversion, should I try my luck with it or does someone here have another recommendation?

Foobar2K can do it. You'll need to find a plugin for encoding WMAs. WMA is closed, so it might be difficult to find it. I know there was one for Foobar 0.8.

I went to do some more searches, and it seems there isn't one for 0.9. This sucks; all right, time to search for other options.

Doh.. ah well. I think MS licenses WMA out to other companies, but Apple doesn't, which makes this hard.

The full version of dBPowerAmp that I use allows me great flexibility and speed at converting files. It uses both my cores and shows a speed of range between 80x and 100x during coverting FLAC files into Apple Lossless. I have also used its batch converter on a whole directory system of about 3k files. I do not use WMA so I can't say anything about how it works with those files.

Ripping uses the accurate rip database.

i've not used dbpoweramp myself, but there seem to be a lot of folks over at hydrogen audio who have switched from eac to dbpa now that it has accuraterip...

i think you'll find info on all the best options for doing what you're trying to do over at ha.

mjb