 | |
| Developer(s) | Robert Kausch |
|---|---|
| Initial release | May 12, 2001; 23 years ago (2001-05-12) (as BonkEnc) |
| Stable release | |
| Repository | github |
| Written in | C,C++ |
| Operating system | Windows,Linux,macOS,FreeBSD |
| Type | CD ripper |
| License | GPL-2.0-or-later |
| Website | www |
fre:ac is a free audio converter and CD extractor forWindows,Linux,macOS, andFreeBSD, distributed under theGPL-2.0-or-later.[2]
Besides extracting audio from compact discs (with various features includinghidden track detection), fre:ac can also convert audio files from one format to another or to the same format at a lower bitrate (a higher bitrate can be forced but this does not increase the quality of the output, instead resulting inan overall loss). fre:ac is compatible with many audio formats such asOgg Vorbis,FLAC,MP3,MP4/M4A,AAC,WAV,WMA, and more.[3][4]fre:ac uses theCDex library[citation needed] to convert from CDs and usesfreedb to retrieve artist/song information from the internet which is written to the files as various types ofID3 tags; this library supportscdparanoia which aims to improve audio quality.[5] The user interface is multilingual with 43 languages and is able to be a portable install on a USB drive.
The first public version of fre:ac was published in 2001 under the name BonkEnc. The program was originally developed to convert audio to the proprietary lossy/lossless Bonk[6] format, as well as MP3. After several0.x versions, with added support for other formats and extracting audio from compact discs, version 1.0 Beta 1 was released on July 5, 2003 which officially marked the beginning of the beta phase.
Finally, on February 21, 2007 the first stable version of the program, version 1.0, was released.[7]
The project changed its name to fre:ac with the release of version 1.0.17 on November 14, 2010.
On March 29, 2020 the project released fre:ac 1.1 as a major update adding native support for Linux, macOS and FreeBSD. The 1.1 update also introduced support for multithreaded file conversions,DSP processing,multichannel audio and an integratedtag editor and removed support for the Bonk format after which the program was named until 2010.[8]
Starting from version 1.1.6, fre:ac has AccurateRip support.[9] The latest update, version 1.1.7, was released on Monday, March 6, 2023.
fre:ac won theSourceForgeCommunity ChoiceProject of the Month award in October 2015.[10] In May 2018 it was selected as the SourceForgeStaff-Pick Project of the Month.[11]
