Convert FLAC TO 320mp3

[kappclark]

Have an older Ford Fiesta. Stereo does not support FLAC, but plays MP3 fine off USB.

What is a good linux utility to convert FLAC to MP3 .. I have maybe 100 FLACS I would like to convert...I am running Debian.

Thank YOu ,

================
UPDATE -- I solved this with a quick search ... simple code works like a charm, so maybe this will help the next person:

https://jima.cat/convert-flac-to-mp3-on-the-ubuntu-command-line/

Apologies for the false alarm

[Yatsushiro]

I use Clementine. It offers many tools for audio (conversion, tag editing, cover art, etc) as well as being a good player in itself.

[kappclark]

I will check out Clementine...thx

[elstensoftware]

mp3fs is my favourite solution: https://www.blisshq.com/music-librar...ng-with-mp3fs/

[kappclark]

Interesting mp3fs -- reading through it, it appears it is transcoding the flacs in real time as MP3's (which saves so much space) ..

my need is for the actual mp3 files, which need to be put on a flash drive, and then can be listened to in the car...

[Miles9]

my need is for the actual mp3 files, which need to be put on a flash drive, and then can be listened to in the car...

The neat thing about mp3fs is that you are only maintaining one set of files. You don't need to use additional space for mp3-versions of your files, and also don't need to think about making a separate version of those files you just added to your collection - just in case you may want to bring them to your car later. Instead the mp3-version is created the moment you copy the songs you want onto your flash drive.

Mp3fs is convenient when you now and then need to pick up a low resolution copy of some songs.
On the other hand, if you have a large flash drive that contains your complete collection in mp3 format this becomes more of a one-time script job. Then there isn't that much to gain by using mp3fs.
Depends on your use case :-)

[zordaz]

I use Clementine. It offers many tools for audio (conversion, tag editing, cover art, etc) as well as being a good player in itself.

IMO Fre:ac and Sound Converter are also good options for converting files. Which one suits you best is of course mostly a personal preference, althought it also might depend on your current installation.

[gordonb3]

Just use ffmpeg - it will also fill the mp3 tags with information from the source flac

ffmpeg -i input.flac -b:a 320k output.mp3

Or to process all files below the current folder:

find . -type f -name '*.flac' -exec bash -c 'FILE="$1"; ffmpeg -i "${FILE}" -b:a 320k "${FILE%.flac}.mp3";' _ '{}' \;

[RobbH]

Just for the sake of completeness, this is the script I use to convert all flac files in a directory to mp3. It is practically identical to the command Bill found in the first post in this thread, but using ffmpeg. It is not original, but I don't recall where I found it:

#!/bin/bash
[[ $# == 0 ]] && set -- *.flac
for f; do
  ffmpeg -hide_banner -i "$f" -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 320k "${f[@]/%flac/mp3}"
done

[agbagb]

I use FlacSquisher, which has the advantage of both working in bulk (if you want) and preserving the file structure of the FLAC originals in the new MP3s.

[elstensoftware]

The neat thing about mp3fs is that you are only maintaining one set of files. You don't need to use additional space for mp3-versions of your files, and also don't need to think about making a separate version of those files you just added to your collection - just in case you may want to bring them to your car later. Instead the mp3-version is created the moment you copy the songs you want onto your flash drive.

Some sort of hybrid that works lazily but caches transcoded files, checking the last modified dates to know when to flush the cache, would be nice.

[kappclark]

Thank you all for the fabulous suggestions .. so much to learn ... and all very helpful...

[DavidBullock62]

Apologies for a late reply, I am pretty sure the VLC Media player also has a bulk conversion capability under save/convert.

[w3wilkes]

DBPoweramp also has a batch converter that works well and preserves tags.

[pfarrell]

I've been using ffmpeg to do the flac to mp3 conversion. I find the ffmpeg documentation to be dense and hard to follow. Apparently ffmpeg the program is just a wrapper that calls all sorts of amazing libraries to do all sorts of conversions. But there is little consistency between modules so the same command options can mean varying things. So far, I'm using

-b:a 320k -q:a 0

but I don't know what the -q option does.