Audio Converter

The only distinction that really matters

Audio formats split into two groups. FLAC and WAV are lossless — they preserve the waveform exactly. MP3, AAC, M4A, OGG, and Opus are lossy: they discard the parts of the signal a listener is least likely to notice, which is how they get so much smaller.

Once a lossy step has happened, the discarded information is gone. This is why converting an MP3 to WAV produces a large file containing exactly the audio that was already in the MP3 — no better, just bigger. It is a useful conversion when a tool demands WAV input, and it is never a quality improvement.

What a conversion does and does not carry

The audio stream is decoded and re-encoded to the target. There is no video involved, so even long recordings finish quickly.

Cover art, lyrics, and most tags are not carried across — the output keeps the audio, not the metadata around it. If your library depends on embedded artwork, re-tag after converting.

Optional processing is available and off by default: loudness normalization brings a recording to a consistent level, and compression evens out the difference between loud and quiet passages. Both are useful for spoken-word recordings and both change the audio, so they are opt-in rather than applied automatically.

Practical choices

• Sharing music or a podcast with anyone: MP3. Nothing else is as universally playable, and the quality at VBR 2 is more than adequate.
• Archiving a master: FLAC. Lossless, and roughly half the size of the equivalent WAV.
• Feeding an audio editor or a tool that demands uncompressed input: WAV.
• Apple ecosystem, or when you want AAC quality in a recognisable container: M4A.
• Modern streaming where both ends support it: Opus, which sounds better than MP3 at a much lower bitrate.