fre:ac portable is a free audio converter and CD ripper for digitizing CDs, converting music files and organizing libraries. It supports MP3, MP4/M4A, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, WAV and Bonk, and can preserve folder and filename structure during batch conversion. CDDB/freedb lookup retrieves track details for tagging. Its portable setup stores settings on a USB stick or external drive.
| Author: | fre:ac |
| License: | Freeware |
| Price: | FREE |
| Released: | Mar 5, 2023 |
| File size: | 20.40 MB |
| Downloads: | 304 |
| Keywords: | portable audio converter, Open Source, CD Ripper, convert, convert flac to mp3, fre:ac Portable, audio file converter, High-Quality Output, MP3, ripper, music, cd ripper, freacm BonkEnc, music library converter, converter, rip, rip audio cd, User-Friendly Interface, Audio Conversion, file |
| Author URL: | https://www.freac.org/ |
fre:ac portable is a free audio converter and CD ripper for people who want to digitize music collections, change audio formats, or prepare files for different playback software and devices. Its portable setup can run from a USB stick or external drive, keeping configuration files on that drive so preferred settings travel with the application rather than being tied to one computer.
The converter handles MP3, MP4/M4A, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, WAV and Bonk, and can convert between supported formats in different combinations. This is useful when a player or audio application cannot open a particular file type, or when a collection needs to be standardized in another format. It can also process entire music libraries while retaining their folder and filename structure, helping preserve an existing organization during a conversion.
For audio CDs, fre:ac reads tracks and saves them as files in the supported formats. Its CDDB/freedb lookup can retrieve album and track information online before ripping, reducing the need to enter titles manually. The program writes track details to ID3v2 or other supported title-information tags. Unicode support covers tags and filenames in writing systems such as Japanese, Cyrillic, Arabic and Indian scripts, which helps keep international metadata legible and correctly labeled.
The interface is intended to make routine ripping and conversion accessible while also providing advanced options for users who want more control. Integrated encoders for MP3, MP4/M4A, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC and Bonk are optimized for multi-core processors, allowing supported conversion and ripping work to use modern CPUs. A multilingual interface is available in 37 languages, making the controls more accessible to users working in different languages.
As a portable application, fre:ac can be kept on removable storage and used with its settings on that drive. It is freeware and is suited to home users organizing or converting music libraries as well as anyone extracting tracks from audio CDs. The supplied Windows compatibility information includes Windows 10; it does not establish support for Windows 11. A CD drive is needed for disc ripping, while audio-file conversion can be used with files already available on the computer.