With fre:ac you easily rip your audio CDs to MP3 or WMA files for use with your hardware player or convert files that do not play with other audio software. You can even convert whole music libraries retaining the folder and filename structure. It currently converts between MP3, MP4/M4A, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, WAV and Bonk formats. The integrated CD ripper supports the CDDB/freedb online CD database. It will automatically query song information and write it to ID3v2 or other title information tags.

Features

  • Converter for MP3, MP4/M4A, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, WAV and Bonk formats
  • Integrated CD ripper with CDDB/freedb title database support
  • Portable application, install on a USB stick and take it with you
  • Multi-core optimized encoders to speed up conversions on modern PCs
  • Full Unicode support for tags and file names
  • Easy to learn and use, still offers expert options when you need them
  • Multilingual user interface available in 37 languages
  • Completely free and open source without a catch

What's New

New features

  • Added a tool for splitting output by various parameters (e.g. duration or number of files)
  • Added support for dithering when reducing sample resolution
  • Added a matrix surround decoder DSP component
  • Added a volume adjustment DSP component

Improvements

  • Added support for WavPack Hybrid Lossless compression with correction files
  • Added support for decoding MPEG-4 DASH files
  • Added support for opening WebM audio files with the .weba extension
  • Added support for downmixing 6.1 channel audio
  • Added support for MusicBrainz metadata in ID3v2, MP4, Vorbis Comment, APEv2 and WMA tags
  • Added support for sort order fields in ID3v2, MP4, Vorbis Comment, APEv2 and WMA tags
  • Added support for rating field in Vorbis Comment, APEv2, MP4 and LIST INFO tags
  • Added rating field to the tag editor
  • Added optional release year column to the joblist
  • Changed filename placeholder to resolve to 1 if disc number is not set
  • Improved compatibility with applications writing non-compliant LIST INFO tags (e.g. Traktor)
  • Added an option to use source file names as output file names if no metadata is present
  • Added an option to control extraction of missing metadata from file names
  • Added an option to restrict file names for reading cover art
  • Added an option to disable intensity stereo phase inversion to Opus settings
  • Added AccurateRip notification options for successful verification and missing database entries
  • Sample rate conversion no longer converts to 32 bit float when the source rate matches the target
  • Added negative exit codes to indicate errors when running freaccmd
  • Added support for KDE color schemes (including dark mode)
  • Improved HiDPI scale factor detection in KDE desktop environments
  • Respect text scaling factor in addition to font size setting on X11 based systems

Bug fixes

  • Fixed crashes when decoding ALAC files (especially with the Windows Store version)
  • Fixed failure (hang and abort after several seconds) to decode chapters from ALAC files
  • Fixed interoperability issues of HE- and HEv2-AAC files created with FDK-AAC with foobar2000
  • Fixed incorrect gapless information when creating HE- and HEv2-AAC files with FDK-AAC
  • Fixed incorrect index times in cuesheets for very long multi-track files
  • Fixed incorrect inclusion of data tracks in the audio track count of CD offset strings
  • Fixed old data remaining in place after updating WMA file tags
  • Fixed selected format resetting to first entry when opening WMA config dialog
  • Fixed excessive bitrate when encoding Vorbis on non-x86 LP64 systems
  • Fixed decoding of MP4 files with a single chunk taking excessively long
  • Fixed HDCD detection for tracks starting with more than about one second of silence
  • Fixed floating point samples being converted to integer when creating WavPack files
  • Fixed inability to close cover art popup window on Linux
  • Fixed long paths being converted to 8.3 format on recent versions of Windows
  • Fixed inability to handle long network paths on some versions of Windows
  • Fixed disc insert and removal detection working unreliably on Windows