If you download a lot of music off the World Wide Web, you have probably encountered audio files saved in the FLAC format before. Though FLAC is a perfectly suitable audio file, there are very few audio players that support it, particularly portable audio players. This often makes it necessary to translate FLAC into the more popular mp3 style of audio file.
Both FLAC and mp3 audio files are compressed versions of the larger .wav and .cda files. Because most people have many audio files, larger formats can quickly take up a lot of space on a hard drive. This makes audio compression formats like mp3 and FLAC necessary.
Though they both compress audio files, there are a few main differences between FLAC and mp3 files. Mp3’s are so popular because they compress the larger audio files to a fraction of their original size. This makes them great for music storage, especially in portable music players. However, the main knock against mp3’s is that such drastic compression results in a loss of sound quality in the track. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. “Lossless” means no sound quality is lost in a FLAC conversion because FLAC only compresses the file by about thirty to sixty percent.
Though FLAC files take up more room, their size gives them other advantage besides retaining sound quality. They have a much faster decoding time and are much less prone to data corruption than mp3s. FLAC files also support replayagain. This means that FLAC files will all play at the same volume, something that can be annoying with mp3s. However, the larger file size keeps FLAC on the fringe of the audio file market and converting them to mp3s is worth sacrificing a little sound quality to able to play them on most computers and portable players.
There are several different programs that will convert FLAC into mp3 files. However, the most popular one for windows is a program called “FLAC to mp3.” FLAC to mp3 will also allow you to convert other types of files into mp3 and will even extract mp3 files from some videos.
The layout and interface of FLAC to mp3 is simple and easy to use. In the center there is a large drop box in which you can drag and drop as many audio files, of FLAC or other styles, as you want. After this is done, on the right side of the window will be several customization options. In the Output Format box select mp3 from the drop down menu. You can also change the rate of conversion here as well. A higher conversion rate will make the progress go quicker, but it can also lead to a higher corruption rate and more loss of sound quality. After you are finished, click the “Start Converting Now” button in the bottom right corner. Conversion could take a little time depending on the number of files and the power of your system. FLAC to mp3 can also be used on Apple computers, or Mac users can use the conversion software provided by Apple.
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