Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

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MikeF90000

Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by MikeF90000 »

Due to some annoying limitations of various apps, I've gotten into the habit of using the 'chains' feature of Audacity.

- Add a new simple chain procedure using File/Edit Chains, call it say 'wma2flac'.
- Insert two steps in this order: Normalize and ExportFLAC. Click OK to save the chain. Note - the Import command is not yet working, not sure why.
- Delete and/or save any open audio files.
- Run File/Apply Chain, select 'wma2flac', select files to convert, click Open and watch the conversions.

Job done!
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Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by Flemur »

audacity and vlc can convert lossless .wma to .flac
Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] if/when it is solved!
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Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by MtnDewManiac »

Flemur wrote:audacity and vlc can convert lossless .wma to .flac
And, at least with VLC (IDK about Audacity, but I wouldn't be surprised), it looks pretty simple. I didn't install any kind of codec pack, yet when I selected the convert option, .FLAC was one of the (audio) choices on the list.

VLC: it plays, it streams, it converts, it chops, it dices - no, wait... you still need kitchen tools for some of those. But still, lol... :P

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Nippon

Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by Nippon »

Why don't you try Soundconverter - Simple audio files converter, eg. from ogg to mp3
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Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by Quexos »

Just FYI: If you want a music player like Foobar2000 on Linux, I've found DeadBeef to be the ticket, and it can convert formats by simple right click > convert.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:starws-box/deadbeef-player
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install deadbeef

To add support for converting formats with it:

For AAC (this one didn't work for me)
sudo apt-get install faac

For FLAC
sudo apt-get install flac

For MP3
sudo apt-get install lame

For Ogg Vorbis
sudo apt-get install vorbis-tools

Quicker one time install of all four of those:
sudo apt-get install faac flac lame vorbis-tools
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Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by phd21 »

Hi Everyone,

FYI: The wonderful Amarok music player can easily convert .wma to .flac and other formats too.

Just click the Home folder icon in the upper left of Amarok, click "Files" (the built-in file manager), browse to your files, select folders and or files, right click, "Copy to collection", that will automatically bring up the options to convert your audio files from one format to another; the advanced button on this screen, also has various options for each of the formats as well.
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ytene
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Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by ytene »

I am not sure if it still works the same way, but I came across a useful solution for converting CD Audio [.wav] to MPEG4 [Lossless] Audio [as used by iTunes] - and vice-versa- which comes in the form of mplayer...

mplayer -ao pcm:file=targetfile.wav sourcefule.m4a

I always found this to be quick and effective and to allow conversion between different audio formats. Haven't tried it in quite a while now, but if you are looking for something that you could automate, or script via a command line [for example iterating through multiple files] then you might find that this or something like it will do the job...
DrHu

Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by DrHu »

https://community.linuxmint.com/softwar ... dconverter
http://soundconverter.org/
--avconv was already mentioned, this is another one available
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Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by phd21 »

Hi Everyone,

I just read your post and the good replies to it. Here are my newer thoughts on this as well.

It seems like this post's thread has been resurrected.

There are some really great and easy to use utilities (programs) for this: SoundConverter, SoundKonverter with a "k" is even better, "sound-juicer", "Format Junkie", "Curlew", etc... And, as was previously mentioned some of the music players, like Amarok, can easily do this as well.

If you have not installed "ubuntu-restricted-extras", do that too.

It could not hurt and would probably help to have a current version of "FFmpeg", which a lot of programs use for audio and video. "FFmpeg" is a Cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec - the leading audio/video codec library.
To install this using the PPA method, open a console terminal, type in, or copy & paste, each line below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/trusty-media
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg


Hope this helps ...
Last edited by phd21 on Sun May 15, 2016 6:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Wild Penguin

Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by Wild Penguin »

FulciLives wrote:
godsotherhand wrote:why would you convert wav to flac? you dont get the quality back..
FLAC is known as LOSSLESS COMPRESSION.

That means you get a compressed file and thus a smaller size than the WAV file but absolutely NO audio quality is lost.
I thought godsotherhand might have made a typo, and meant to write mp3/ogg to wav instead of wav to flac... otherwise it doesn't make much sense what he is saying, and it would fit the context, as there is the other user who was for some reason doing the conversion (from lossy to wav), which still stumps me a little bit.

But your post summarizes quite well the difference between lossy / lossless. It seldom (if ever) makes sense to re-convert from a lossy format!
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Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by Portreve »

While I do not have any WMAs, my go-to transcoder in LM is Sound Converter. Because I also deal with source material (tracks from CDs, for example) I use EasyTAG to add album art and all the relevant metadata.

I love both those programs.
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Ryan_Stevens

Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by Ryan_Stevens »

For Video, Audio, and Picture convert any format I'm using Format Factory. It's genuinely unbelievable programming for video, audio, and picture converter.I'm using this item it is uncommon programming for me and I like this software.Only one programming I can convert any format.
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Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by phd21 »

Hi "Ryan_Stevens",

This is an older post that has been updated.

Linux Mint 18.x users can update "ffmpeg" using the link below, Linux Mint 17.x can still use the other instructions.
http://tipsonubuntu.com/wp-content/uplo ... g-icon.jpg

To install this using the PPA method, open a console terminal, type in, or copy & paste, each line below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/ffmpeg-3
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ffmpeg libav-tools x264 x265


The Linux applications that have already been mentioned (ie: SoundKonverter, Sound Converter, etc...) in this post's replies can easily and quickly convert most audio formats into other audio formats. There are many other excellent Linux applications that can convert multimedia files (video, audio, etc...) into other formats as well, like "Curlew", "WinFF", "FF Multi Converter", Selene, transmageddon, etc... "Converseen" is a superb image converter.

Another excellent audio converter and CD ripper is "freac" which runs perfectly well in Linux Mint.
https://www.freac.org/

Another post with more information
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=237647&hilit=freac

The application "Format Factory" you mentioned appears to be a MS Windows application, so how are you running that in Linux Mint?
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Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by Termy »

I realise this is an older thread, but thought I might as well add my method, since it was bumped up.

My approach is typically:

Code: Select all

for FILE in *.wav; { ffmpeg -i "$FILE" "${FILE%wav}ogg"; }
It converts all wave files in the current directory (non-recursively) to ogg format (my go-to format, but choose whichever extension you require), which also keeps the originals, just in-case. You can remove them by using:

Code: Select all

gvfs-trash *.wav
It sends all of the wave files in the current directory, (again, non-recursively) to the trash, in-case you need to recover them. Use rm *.wav if you want to permanently remove them.
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fruitkiller

Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by fruitkiller »

ffmpeg can do this rather easily, much easier than finding the perfect parameters for those huge short high quality HD WMV's that are 800MB for 5 minutes of video, but it should be as simple a ALAC to FLAC, no? I know it was the same with lossless .wv files (not .wav, some rare people on this planet rip audio cd's or vinyl or whatever into .wv lossless format...it's a rare occurence but, right now the standard is FLAC and anybody going for lossless should just do FLAC, I know its possible to make FLAC files from MacOSX programs.

Have you tried the GUI program simply named Sound Converter? It converts anything to any audio file format I feed it when lazy and using gui programs :)
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Re: Instruction on how to convert lossless .wma to .flac

Post by Portreve »

I maintain my own music archive exclusively in FLAC. If I have a device that didn't support or, or if storage capacity is a significant factor, then I use OGG unless, again, the device doesn't support it, and then and only then will I fall back to MP3.
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