It's a common scenario where you will find the true audiophiles always experimenting with multiple audio formats. The reason is the high quality of audio, which audiophiles seek to enhance their music listening experience.
One such high quality audio format is FLAC which is trying to get common nowadays. Though as a lossless and high quality audio format, it is still not preferred by all music lovers because of its large size and low compatibility.
Just because of these two FLAC downsides MP3 is preferred. To save storage space and increase the codec compatibility one should consider converting FLAC to MP3. And This conversion should only be done by using a dedicated FLAC to MP3 converter. Because if not done properly, the output file will have audio quality issues. In this article you’ll learn about FLAC, MP3, and a detailed tutorial for FLAC to MP3 conversion.
Part 2: What Is FLAC: An Overview
FLAC is the short term for "Free Lossless Audio Codec". It’s a lossless audio compression codec for producing digital audio. It is a free audio codec and it can compress the original raw audio file to nearly 70 percent of its size without compromising the audio quality. However, FLAC is not a common audio format and this is the only reason why most music player devices don’t support it directly. But powerful software audio players can play FLAC files flawlessly on many software platforms like Windows, Mac, Android, iOS.
Pros of FLAC Format:
• Used for high quality and lossless audio.
• Effectively good for powerful sound systems, home theaters, and for some of the high-end headphones.
Cons of FLAC Format:
• Have a large file size.
• Low compatibility.
Part 3: What Is MP3: A Quick Introduction
MP3 is a coding format for digital audio just like FLAC. However FLAC is lossless while MP3 is lossy, which means that MP3 codec greatly compromises the raw audio quality after compression as compared to FLAC. That’s why MP3 files have lower bit-rate and smaller file sizes than FLAC files. Though MP3 is a lossy audio codec, still it can let you enjoy high quality music up to 256kbps. It’s popularity and high compatibility should be the best reason for converting FLAC to MP3.
Advantages of MP3
• High audio quality (but lossy) upto 256kbps.
• Almost every audio player supports MP3.
• Highly suitable for low storage devices as MP3 files are smaller in size.
Note: We hope you now have learned some basic information about MP3 and FLAC and the reason why you should convert FLAC to MP3.
Part 4: The Most Advanced and Versatile FLAC to MP3 Converter
In the start of the article we talked about a dedicated FLAC to MP3 converter software. VideoProc is the required software here for converting FLAC to MP3. Well VideoProc is an all-in-one audio and video processing (editing and converting) software. VideoProc is pretty advanced in its nature but we will currently stick to its audio conversion capabilities. VideoProc isn’t just limited to FLAC or MP3, but can also convert/process almost any known audio format.
It has some advanced features like batch file conversion, audio settings customization, meta info editing, and merging multiple FLAC files to make a single MP3 file. With level 3 GPU acceleration batch processing becomes a breeze. You'll learn about these in detail in "Part 5" below. But before getting to the final part you should download the VideoProc software package and install it on your PC/Mac. Check the download links below.
Part 5: How to Convert FLAC to MP3 With VideoProc
This is a step-by-step tutorial for converting all your FLAC files to MP3. Please find the steps below.
Step 1: Open VideoProc and click "Video" on the first splash screen to go to the main interface. Then in the main interface click the "+Music" button. Load your FLAC file(s) in VideoProc. After loading the files the interface will look like this below.
Step 2: Now in "Target Format" click the "Music" tab and from this list select "MP3".
Step 3: Now move above to the loaded FLAC files and look for "Codec Option". Click it to open the audio settings. Here you can customize the audio settings like "Quality", "Sample Rate", "Bit-rate", and "Channel Configuration". Click "Apply To All" if you want to keep the current settings same for all the other FLAC files that you loaded in batch.
Step 4: To change the "Meta-Info" first click the "Name & Tag" tab on the top. This will open a meta-info editor. Carefully add meta-info like "Song name", "Artist", "Lyrics" etc. Click the "Add Artwork" button and load and image to add artwork to the current song. Finally, click "Done" to return to the main interface.
Note: Meta-info needs to be edited individually for every song except the "Artist" and "Album". For these two you can use "Apply To All".
Step 5: Now look to the right of the main program window and find "Merge" option just above the "Output Folder" option. Put a check on this "Merge" option if you want to merge all the FLAC songs. Skip this step if not needed.
Step 6: That’s it, just hit the "Run" button and start the FLAC to MP3 conversion. The conversion process will get over within few tiny moments. After the conversion go to the "Output Folder" and move your MP3 files to your favorite device.
Final Words
You don't have to think twice when you have VideoProc with you for converting FLAC to MP3 or converting other video/audio/DVD files. The best reasons would be its easy learning curve, speed, batch processing, and advanced audio customization. So instead of wasting your precious time on some other low performing audio converters, you’d consider to give VideoProc a shot. Check out the download links below.
