It's a shame that the front end isn't
easily available. I have now tried pacpl at the command line and it's
very straightforward - still a gui would be nice.

Haven't so far tried soundconverter or winff - maybe later. Gobby: yes,
audacity was my first choice, it's always been reliable, and one of the
things that converted me to Ubuntu in the first place. However I can't
see (perhaps I haven't looked) a batch mode. It's very long winded using
it file by file.