Free .flac to mp3 Converter?

Hi. I was wondering if anyone on here knew of a good/excellent .flac TO mp3 converter that is FREE.

Specifically I would like to make 320 bitrate mp3s. The reason I'm asking is because I've tried looking on my own and all I find are trial versions that require you to pay a lot of money for the full one.

So if anyone knows of a decent free .flac to mp3 converter please let me know. I need it to be able to convert to 320 or at the very least 256 bitrate.

 

foobar2000 + LAME

 

Not sure if it will work but have you looked at wavepad? I also know VLC media player has a converter too.

 

That has a converter within the program?

I'm liking the look of that VLC Media Player. I'll give it a shot first and if I don't like it I'll try foobar.

Thanks for replying.

 

Yepp, Foobar has a built in converter.

Read up on "Super" if that can do it, I'm not sure.

 

Why MP3 my friend?

.flac is way better

If your about to say to save space or to play on a device, in both cases unless your device is very old it should support AAC and that format is 2x better than MP3

AAC is almost perfectly 2x better actually literally speaking.

1/2 file size for same quality (1/2 bitrate same quality)
or same file size for 2x the quality.

I'll layout an easy free way to convert to AAC from .flac for you if your interested.

There is the manly man way with just two simple downloads for the flac.exe and neroaacenc.exe programs and I teach you how to use them in the command line.

Or you can use the simple mans way with a few frontends. I like MeGUI and there is a Flac frontend.

 

Flac may be lossless, but it doesn't sound it when you play it in Foobar.

And you're comment made me curious - any way to save in aac using WIndows Media Player? (from CDs - currently I use 320KBit/s MP3s)

 

No I dont think so, it can play AAC but not save AAC files (convert)

Nero makes the best AAC codec and they have been so nice as to release it to the pubic for free but due to its UELA it cant be included in another program, thus why it wont be a part of Windows Media Player.

MeGUI the frontend I use for most of my encoding uses NeroAAC but its the only codec it cant download and install for you, you have to do it manually. As for the container AAC is usually used for music in a .MP4 or .M4A file. I personally use .M4A so I know its an audio file and not a video file.

 

OK - I thought it would be an .acc file or so... I did play with .mp4 shortly... problem is getting the right information for the CDs... and then synchronizing with my Sony player.
Windows Media Player will not synchronized MP4
And somehow it doesn't carry the album cover onto the Walkman if I use th Sony utility.

Ah well, thanks for the reply anyway

 

Hmm thats weak of sony, my Sony phone does it just fine.

Does your player work with .M4A??

Also I dont "sync" I just always do drag & drop.

For audio in windows its all about Winamp for me, Id probably figure out a good solution for you if I had the same equipment to work with.

 

OH, I can drag an drop in Windows Explorer - that works fine. But no album pic
The "Connect" Sfotware or how its called... even MP3s lack the album pic...

And that's why I like the synchronisation feature in Windows Media Player - can't do that with MP4s though... .M4A - I don't know ...

But thanks again I'll have to see.
(And reply to your PM )

 

Uhh .flac may be better but it's million times bigger in file size.

Plus .flac isn't compatible with my iPhone.

As for VLC Media Player does anyone have a step by step guide on how to convert from flac to mp3. I did something that involved the stream function but when into the folder that it placed it in and tried to open it Windows Media Player said something about "file could not be played"

However in Windows Explorer it showed the file as an mp3 and the size of the file was typical of other mp3 files I've got in my library....

 

I think tonight I'll make a guide, but it will be how to go from FLAC to AAC, your Iphone supports AAC, infact all Itunes stuff is in AAC format as its an apple based codec.

 

Yep it does support aac...

I'd really appreciate it man. But there's no rush or anything. I love the look of VLC though and if I can get the hang of how to work with it I'll definitely keep it.

 

I use VCL to play movies and stuff on my computers, its a really good program.

I prefer MPC (media player classic) in most cases, but the few files it wont handle VCL usually will.

I do not use it for converting or anything like that. I use the tools that are really designed to do it instead. Though the player is using the same tools its just acing as a 3rd body to hold them.

Like when you use LAME MP3 to encode with Winamp its the Lame codec doing the work not Winamp, so rather than use Winamp to do it I would just use the lame.exe on its own at the command line level or a frontend just for that codec.

Flac.exe is what does the flac encoding and ecoding, and now it comes with a frontend included with the download. Its the first part in the process of converting as you will see when I get the guide up later.

I'll also try to break down why AAC > MP3 and what it is.

I like making guides, just will be a matter of how much downtime I find on my hands when I get to work tonight. Speaking of that, I really should have been in bed 4 hours ago, I only have 4 hours left till I have to get ready... so I'll slowly try to back away from the computer and crawl in bed here.

 

Ok base work for the guide is up: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5630238#post5630238

took me a few hours and I am out of time to do any more work on it tonight but I got the entire Flac --> MP3/AAC section done.

I also had no problem adding the full tags & cover art back into the files after the conversion with winamp. Though I have 2 specialty programs that can do it as well using the freedb.

Id love support and comments on the guide, I have a lot of expertise to are about encoding especially the more difficult video encoding stuff.

I Guarantee you the extra few minutes it takes to do it my way are well worth it vs just plugging them into some strange program and having it pop out some mp3's at you.

 

Does the LAME encoder allow one to encode at 320 kbps?

I'm using foobar2000 and when I go to "convert" it has 192 selected and the highest it will allow me to select is 245....

 

You want to create an additional output format preset for this.

Go to File, Preferences, Tools, Converter.
Click the "Add New" button next to the "Output formats" list, add this:



... and then select it from the "Output format" drop-down list when using the converter.

 

Meh, the AAC guide = win.. Mp3 = fail

 

^I do believe you and I know you're right.

Except if I remember correctly your guide doesn't show how to do that with foobar or VLC. And the program you do use seems a lil complicated.

Furthermore ALL my music is in mp3 format. And from what I've read it would do absolutely no good to convert them to aac right?

mp3 is a lossy format. I'm not too sure about aac but either way converting from a lossy format to a lossless format isn't going to increase the quality of the music I already have right? There's no way to recover the data that was "lost" when I got the mp3.

And if that's the case I honestly do not want to go thru the hassle of downloading all of my music again in .flac and then convert them into .aac for my iPhone.

Maybe later on down the line when I have the time and money or w/e but right now I just simply want to enjoy my music without going thru a great deal of hassle.

 

You need to tell foobar the location of the LAME executable if it isn't in your path (see the "..." button in the screenshot above).

 

You can find LAME here (MP3/LAME Bundles/LAME 3.98.2). All you need from the .zip file is lame.exe, extract it into foobar's main directory (where it'll find it automatically) or somewhere else (then you'll have to tell it the location as mentioned before).

You probably want to post further questions here in this thread, since there's no guarantee for me getting/reading/responding to PMs in a timely manner.

 

Thanks man!

I think I almost got it.

 

Once again thanks for all your help. I'll definitely be keeping the program. That's such a major relief for me.

One last question though...is it possible to use it to convert into .aac? For future downloads?

 

Sure, it can convert to any format that you can find an appropriate encoder (i.e. a command line application) for.

For AAC I like Nero's encoder (neroAacEnc.exe, available here). Its parameters are different from LAME (obviously) and described here. To add it to foobar, you'd add another output format preset like you did for LAME, just with a different name, parameters, and encoder application.

 

Sweet. You def get some rep for that...

Appreciate it again man.

 

Not sure where you came from on that lol, I am not suggesting convert a MP3 --> AAC, I have a very simple one step program to do it all for FLAC --> AAC I don think you read the guide yet or you would have known that

What conversion are you trying to do???

I have 2 sections in there now one for FLAC --> AAC and another to Rip Directly from CD --> AAC both easy to do and setup. Only MeGUI was the "complicated" one the first part of the guide, but thats because its a very able program that automates all this stuff for you so you do not need to know the command line parameters once its setup its easier to use and it will be the gateway into the next sections of the guide that go into video encoding.

None of it is really hard though and is something you should learn if you want to encode, its the new way and new standards.

Its like people that still write checks at the grocery store rather than use a debit card, it drives me nuts...

Saying its complicated so you dont want to learn it is like saying your asking for a Camaro and I come up to you and say I'll give you a Corvette instead, but you have to learn to drive a stick shift since its not automatic.

If you want to cruse along in auto on the Camaro thats fine, but I'll see ya later when I pass you by in the Corvette and all I had to do was learn to drive it not go pay for it, the great thing here is I just gave you free lessons on how to drive, if I were you I would take the free course.

When all is said and done and your music collection is complete, the extra 10 minutes to learn and extra 10 seconds to encode will be worth it for the increased quality of your music collection and larger amount of music you can hold on your disk/device. Anything permanent like a music collection should have the maximum amount of effort put into it from the start since its an investment.

 

What's the difference between the -b in the screenshot and the default V in the command line for 245kbps MP3 conversion?

 

I would guess variable bitrate and fixed bitrate

 

Fair enough, don't know enough of the encoding technical details to do anything else other than follow instructions.

 

My guess was correct - http://www.multimediasoft.com/asrec/help/asrec_00003f.htm

b is a constant bitrate and v is for variable.

just like with the AAC guide I recommend using a VBR unless you have some very specific reason to use a CBR.

 

I think that I used MediaMonkey to convert some .flacs to .mp3s, but it's been a while.....it worked just fine except the free trial gives you limited time (like 30 days or so) so it won't be a permanent, long-term solution unless you want to pay $30 for it.

 

Look I KNOW what your guide was for.

To turn .flac into .aac. I got that part.

However you're not getting the part where I said that basically all of my music is already in the .mp3 format. I only own a few .flac files.

And rather than have a library with a majority of the files mp3 and a small little minority in .aac I'd rather just have every single file in one simple format.

So that's why I wanted to go from .flac to .mp3. That's the ONLY reason. Not because I think mp3 is better than aac. It's just simple convenience and peace of mind for me.

Unless someone can tell me with absolute authority that there's a way to convert from mp3 to aac that will retain the quality (or even better IMPROVE the quality) I'm going to just stick with what I have now and continue to get my songs in mp3 format. That's really the only point I was trying to make.

I can't go back in time and get all my songs again in .flac and I have no idea if it's possible or worth it to convert my current mp3s into the aac format. SO the foobar2000 solution is perfect for me right now until I hear otherwise....

 

Yeah if you go from MP3 to AAC you will lose quality, though if its like 320kb/s MP3 you probably couldn't notice it if you tried.

I dont personally consider a mix & match file type a good reason to stick with the old ways, I must have 4 different kinds of music and 15 different kinds of video files.

 

Another question: how do I set a variable bitrate on the foobar converter without screwing up. The previous example was for a constant bitrate but I wouldn't mind knowing the exact lines for a variable bitrate.

 

For VBR mode you should really use the -V n presets (n = 0-9), and foobar supports those out of the box - set encoder type to "MP3 (LAME)" and you get a nice and easy slider to set the quality level (n).

If for whatever reason you absolutely have to do it the hard way, in the "Parameters" text box replace "-b 320" with "-V n" where n is your chosen quality level. If you don't know any better, start with n = 2.

 

i would keep the original FLAC files. Burn them to DVD if you lack space for them.

Try foobar2000.

I don't have my LAME presets in front of me, but i recall being

-q 2 --present standard --vbr-new -m s

That seemed to be a good compromise between size and quality, especially if you keep the original lossless source.

 

Slider goes maximum 245 kbps so I'll have to do it the hard way. Thanks for the instructions.

 

That bitrate is an estimated average and completely irrelevant for the encoding process (when adding a custom output preset, you can type what ever fantasy value you want into the bitrate box in the "Display Info"(!) section - this is just for display).

 

VBR drives me insane....as for keeping the .flac files I would but there are few portable players out there that support the format. I suppose if I get an external hard drive I'll look into it.

Or even down the line I might rebuy all those CDs and just rip them to .flac and store them on an external HD.

 

Does anyone know if there's a way to get iTunes to import CDs with a CBR? So far I've been unable to get it to do that. I've deselected "VBR" under the "Custom" settings and yet it's still giving me varying bit rates....

I don't mind using foobar to do it. I just thought it would be simpler to import using iTunes.

 

Why not use a real CD ripping program like CDEx or EAC? both free and either one is easily better than iTunes.

 

Itunes uses AAC and AAC uses VBR as a part of its design. There is a way to force CBR with AAC but you get no benefit out of it just a larger file.

 

Will they also get the Album Art off the CD?