Convert FLAC to MP3
Drop a FLAC and get it back as an MP3, for a car, an older player, or a phone with little room left. The title, artist, album, and cover art come across, so the song keeps its name and picture, and the size of the MP3 is shown before you download it.
Play the sound to a moment, then press Set from player to use that time as the start or the end. Times can be typed too.
The result appears here once a file is open.
How to use it#
- Drop a FLAC onto the box above, or click it to choose one.
- Pick a bitrate. 192 kbps suits most listening, and 320 kbps keeps the most.
- To keep only part of it, set the start and end, typed or taken from the player with Set from player.
- Play the MP3 in the preview, then download it.
Why turn a lossless file into an MP3#
FLAC keeps every sample of the original recording, packed into about half the space of a WAV, so a CD-quality song takes around 5 MB a minute and a hi-res one far more. That suits a music collection kept on a computer, and fills a phone quickly. Plenty of car stereos, older players, and some speakers do not play FLAC at all.
An MP3 at 320 kbps takes about 2.4 MB a minute and is very hard to tell from the FLAC; at 192 kbps it takes 1.4 MB and most listeners still cannot. Keep the FLAC as your master copy, and make MP3s from it whenever a device needs one. A FLAC is the best thing to make an MP3 from, since nothing has been lost before the MP3 encoder.
Hi-res FLAC: 24-bit and 96 kHz#
Many downloads from music stores are 24-bit at 96 or 192 kHz. An MP3 holds up to 48 kHz, so the sound is brought down to 48 kHz on the way in, which removes only sound above the range people can hear. The 24 bits make no difference to an MP3, which does not store bits per sample at all.
So a hi-res FLAC and a CD-quality FLAC of the same recording give much the same MP3. The extra detail in the hi-res file is in the parts an MP3 leaves out.
Tags and cover art#
A FLAC stores its title, artist, album, track number, and cover art as Vorbis comments and an embedded picture. They are copied into the MP3 as ID3 tags, the form every music app reads, so the song lands in the right album with its artwork.
A whole album is usually one FLAC per track, and the page converts one file at a time. An album ripped as a single FLAC with a CUE sheet comes out as one long MP3; set the start and end to save a track at a time.
Frequently asked questions#
Does converting FLAC to MP3 lose quality?
#
Yes, a little, because an MP3 leaves out detail to be small, while the FLAC kept everything. At 320 kbps the difference is very hard to hear, and at 192 kbps most people cannot hear it either. Keep the FLAC so you can make a fresh MP3 later.
Which bitrate should I pick?
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320 kbps if you want the MP3 as close to the FLAC as an MP3 can get, and 192 kbps for a phone or a car, where it takes less room. 128 kbps saves the most space and suits spoken word.
Is the cover art kept?
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Yes. The title, artist, album, and the picture embedded in the FLAC go into the MP3 as ID3 tags. A cover kept as a separate image beside the file, such as folder.jpg, is not part of the FLAC, so it does not come across.
Can I convert a whole album at once?
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Not on this page, which takes one file at a time. Each track converts in a few seconds, and the settings stay as you set them between files.
Is my file uploaded?
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No. The FLAC is read and converted inside this browser tab, and the MP3 is handed straight to your downloads. Nothing is sent to a server.