@Fuzionx I was aware of the issue with the icons not animating during audio conversion.
For some reason mIRC won't initiate the timers until after the conversion com has returned a result. This is strange because if I do a simple file to file conversion , outside of the script, it works fine. This is a known bug and I will resolve it soon.
As for the $read error. This is probably just caused by the script trying to read the log file before it's created. Your computer is probably much more responsive than mine, as I mistreat mine with 130+ processes :P
Try this edit and let me know if you still get that error: http://paste.kde.org/183224/raw/

@Abcdefmonkey Try this edit and let me know if you still get an error: http://paste.kde.org/183224/raw/