Welcome to the fre:ac project Print
Sunday, 11 July 2010 14:00

fre:ac is a free audio converter and CD ripper with support for various popular formats and encoders. It converts freely between MP3, M4A/AAC, FLAC, WMA, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, Speex, Monkey's Audio (APE), WavPack, WAV and other formats.

With fre:ac you easily rip your audio CDs to MP3 or M4A 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.

The integrated CD ripper supports the CDDB/GNUdb online CD database. It will automatically query song information and write it to ID3v2 or other title information tags.

Features (click an entry to see details)

  • Converter for MP3, M4A/AAC, FLAC, WMA, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and other formats

    fre:ac converts freely between all supported formats. No matter if you need WMA to MP3, MP3 to WAV, M4A to MP3, WAV to MP3 or any other conversion, fre:ac supports any combination of formats.

  • Integrated CD ripper with CDDB/GNUdb title database support

    The integrated CD ripper will convert your audio CDs to files on your hard disk. It supports all of the formats available for regular audio file conversion. fre:ac can query the CDDB/GNUdb online CD database to find artist and title information prior to ripping. No need to enter track names manually.

  • Portable application, install on a USB stick and take it with you

    fre:ac can be installed on a USB stick or external drive so you can take it with you and use it on any computer. It will also store its configuration files on the portable drive. That way it will always start up with your custom settings.

  • Multi-core optimized encoders to speed up conversions on modern PCs

    The MP3, M4A/AAC, Opus and Speex encoders integrated with fre:ac make use of modern multi-core CPUs, so ripping and converting speeds get a real boost. You will save time and get the job done quickly.

  • Full Unicode support for tags and file names

    fre:ac provides full support for the Unicode character set. That way it can handle not only Latin scripts, but also Japanese, Cyrillic, Arabic, Indian and others. If you like music from all over the world, you can tag your files in the original script.

  • Easy to learn and use, still offers expert options when you need them

    fre:ac's user interface is designed to be intuitive so you will be able to use the basic features without any trouble. It still offers advanced options when you need them so you will be able to go beyond simple ripping and format conversion using fre:ac.

  • Available for all major operating systems

    fre:ac is a multi-platform application and available for Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD and Haiku. The Windows version is available stand-alone or from the Microsoft Store. The Linux version is availble in AppImage, Flatpak and Snap format.

  • Multilingual user interface available in 43 languages

    fre:ac comes with a multilingual user interface and is currently available in 43 languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Spanish (Latin American), Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Cantonese, Vietnamese, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Greek, Turkish, Hungarian, Romanian, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Afrikaans, Basque, Esperanto, Galician, Catalan, Valencian and Corsican). It can be translated to other languages easily using the 'smooth Translator' utility that is included in the distribution.

  • Completely free and open source without a catch

    fre:ac is available for free without any adware or other foul things. However, the project relies on your support to be able to push the development further. If you like this software, please consider making a donation. Click on one of the icons in the donation section to the right to support the fre:ac project with a donation.