fre:ac Is an Outstanding Free Audio File Converter and CD Ripper For Windows, Linux, and macOS

Hazem Abbas

Oct 6, 2023 — 3 min read

fre:ac is a robust and highly efficient audio converter and CD ripper that offers support for a wide range of popular formats and encoders. It effortlessly converts between various formats such as MP3, M4A/AAC, FLAC, WMA, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, Speex, Monkey's Audio (APE), WavPack, WAV, and many others, providing you with extensive flexibility and compatibility options for your audio files.

One of the key features of fre:ac is its ability to easily and seamlessly rip your audio CDs to high-quality MP3 or M4A files, ensuring that your music is compatible with any hardware player you may have. Moreover, fre:ac allows you to convert files that might not be compatible with other audio software, making it a versatile tool for managing and converting your audio collection.

In addition to its powerful conversion capabilities, fre:ac also offers the convenience of preserving the original folder and filename structure when converting entire music libraries. This means that you can easily organize and manage your music files without worrying about losing the structure and organization you have set up.

To further enhance the user experience, fre:ac integrates seamlessly with the CDDB/GNUdb online CD database. This integration allows for automatic retrieval of song information and effortless tagging in ID3v2 or other title information tags. With this feature, you can easily and accurately organize your music library, ensuring that all your songs are properly tagged and categorized.

Overall, fre:ac is a comprehensive and reliable audio conversion and CD ripping software that offers powerful features and extensive format support. Whether you need to convert your audio files to a different format, rip your CDs, or manage your music library, fre:ac is the perfect tool to meet your needs.

Features

Converter for MP3, M4A/AAC, FLAC, WMA, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and other formats
Integrated CD ripper with CDDB/GNUdb 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
Available for all major operating systems
Multilingual user interface available in 43 languages
Completely free and open source without a catch
Added support for editing lyrics in the tag editor
Added support for creating cue sheets and playlists with freaccmd
Improved DSP processing performance by up to 70% (mainly on Windows)
Added frequency bandwidth setting to FDK-AAC encoder configuration dialog
Added an option to toggle logging of complete paths in log files
Added options for specifying cover art files to freaccmd
Added support for reading Shift_JIS encoded CD-Text
Added support for writing album and track comments to cue sheets
Added support for ID3v2 tags in RF64 files
Added support for updating Vorbis Comment tags
Added support for updating ID3v2 tags in RIFF and AIFF files
Added support for updating LIST INFO tags in RIFF, RF64 and Wave64 files
Added support for ensemble field in Vorbis Comment and APEv2 tags
Added support for movement field in ID3v2, Vorbis Comment, APEv2 and MP4 tags
Added support for additional URL fields in APEv2 tags
Added a tag editor option to keep album artist even if identical to track artist
Added media type field to tag editor