Though some would consider transcoding a heresy, moving from a lossless audio format like FLAC to a lossy one – such as MP3, Ogg, or Opus –it has its advantages. FlacSquisher provides you with all you need to make your FLAC audio files more compact and thus easier to carry with you on your favorite mobile player without losing much of their original quality. The program will replicate the original folder structure, so that moving your favorite albums and even an entire FLAC library to a new device does not pose a problem.
FlacSquisher works with folders, not individual files. This feature certainly comes in handy when moving entire albums to another device that doesn’t support FLAC files, but may be a small drawback when wishing to transcode selected tracks – you will need to put that specific track or track selection into a new folder in order to load them into the program’s interface. The interface itself is fairly simple and easy to use. All you have to do is select the source and destination folders and the codec to be used in the conversion process among the only three supported – MP3, Ogg, and Opus. (Opus is a fairly new compression format that delivers MP3 audio quality in half the size.) This limited list of supported formats is probably the only drawback you will find in this app, though MP3 will suffice for most users.
Each encoder comes with its own output settings, which are easily customizable to fit your specific preferences. The program also allows you to tweak some general settings regarding the file extensions in the source folder to be ignored during the re-encoding process and those that will be copied to the target folder, such as the image files to be added to the new files as cover art. All the other ID3 tags existing in the source FLAC files will also be carried over to the new ones, provided that some simple requisites are met.
FlacSquisher is an excellent audio converter designed for large collections and album-based music libraries. Its flexibility when it comes to customizing the quality and size of the resulting files will allow you to go from lossless to lossy without compromising the resulting quality more than necessary.
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