fre:ac1.1.7

fre:ac converts audio files between formats and extracts tracks from audio CDs, giving you files that can play on hardware players or work with software that rejected the originals. It handles MP3, M4A/AAC, FLAC, WMA, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, Speex, Monkey’s Audio (APE), WavPack, WAV, and other supported formats in combinations such as WMA to MP3, M4A to MP3, or WAV to MP3.

Its integrated CD ripper saves disc tracks to your hard drive and can query the CDDB/GNUdb online database for artist and title details before ripping. Retrieved information can be written to ID3v2 and other title-information tags, so track names do not have to be entered manually. Whole music libraries can be converted while preserving their existing folder and filename structure.

Full Unicode support covers tags and filenames in Latin, Japanese, Cyrillic, Arabic, Indian, and other scripts. The built-in MP3, M4A/AAC, Opus, and Speex encoders use modern multi-core CPUs to accelerate ripping and conversion. The program can also reside on a USB stick or external drive, keeping its configuration there for use with customized settings on another computer.

It suits people archiving CDs, preparing music for a hardware player, repairing incompatible file formats, or maintaining libraries across different codecs. On MacOS, version 1.1.7 supports both Intel and Apple Silicon architecture, and fre:ac is categorized under Music & Audio as freeware.