fre:ac — The Complete Guide: Free Open-Source Audio Conversion, Even for Whole Libraries
fre:ac is an open-source audio converter for Windows, macOS and Linux. It is free for any use, including commercial, with no registration and no advertising add-ons in the installer. Drag in files or a folder, choose an encoder and quality, and get consistent output.
fre:ac
Robert Kausch
Open-source audio converter between MP3, AAC, FLAC, Opus, WAV and more, with whole-library batch conversion and a built-in CD ripper.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Common formats — MP3, M4A/AAC, FLAC, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, WAV and more.
- Whole-library conversion — folder structure and file names are preserved.
- CD ripper — with online track lookup.
- Multi-core encoding — fast conversion of large batches.
- Portable edition — runs from a USB drive without installation.
Who it suits
Anyone who needs to convert recordings of site meetings, lectures or acoustic measurements into one compact format for storage and sharing. For measurements where the original signal matters, stay with lossless WAV or FLAC. Note: the last stable release came out in March 2023, and since then only continuous development builds have been published.
Related tools
For editing, noise removal and spectrum analysis of recordings — Audacity. For batch conversion of both audio and video in one interface — Shutter Encoder. For the command-line engine behind many converters — FFmpeg.
Audacity
Audacity Team
Audio recording and editing — narration for tutorials, plus a spectrogram for examining noise and vibration recordings.
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Shutter Encoder
Paul Pacifico
An FFmpeg-based video, audio and image converter with a graphical interface, render queue, subtitles, lossless cutting and hardware acceleration.
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FFmpeg
FFmpeg project
A command-line engine for encoding, converting, cutting and compressing video and audio in almost any format, and the basis of most free video tools.
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File Converter
Adrien Allard
Convert and compress images, video and audio straight from the Windows right-click menu, without opening an app.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
A clean, fast and genuinely free audio converter that works equally well for a one-off file and a whole library. If you need more than conversion, add an editor.