FLAC to MP3 makes lossless FLAC music small enough for phones, cars and players that don’t support FLAC. Choose 320 kbit/s to keep the most quality. The conversion runs in your browser, so your music is never uploaded.
How to convert FLAC to MP3
- Choose a .flac file.
- MP3 is already selected under Save as. Pick the quality.
- Click Convert, listen to the preview and download the MP3.
Choosing a bitrate for a music library
| Quality | 4-minute song | Compared to FLAC | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 320 kbit/s | about 9.6 MB | about a third | Good headphones, keeping the most |
| 192 kbit/s | about 5.8 MB | about a fifth | Phones, earbuds, car stereos |
| 128 kbit/s | about 3.8 MB | about a seventh | Spoken word, saving space |
A CD-quality FLAC song is usually 25–35 MB for 4 minutes, depending on how dense the music is. Most listeners cannot tell 320 kbit/s from the FLAC in a car or on earbuds; for quiet passages on good headphones, 320 kbit/s is the safe choice.
What you lose
MP3 is a lossy format. It removes the parts of the sound people hear least, mostly very high frequencies and detail masked by louder sounds. At 320 kbit/s that loss is very small; at 128 kbit/s cymbals, reverb tails and applause can sound slightly smeared. What is removed cannot be brought back, so converting the MP3 back to FLAC later does not restore the quality.
Some other details change as well:
- High-resolution FLAC (88.2, 96 or 192 kHz) is saved at 48 kHz, the highest rate MP3 supports. 24-bit depth is not kept either; MP3 has no fixed bit depth.
- Tags and cover art are not copied. Re-add them with a tag editor.
- Multichannel FLAC (5.1) is mixed down to stereo.
Tips
- Keep your FLAC files as the archive, and make MP3 copies for devices.
- Use the same quality for the whole library, so all songs sound alike and the size is predictable.
- If your player or phone supports it, M4A / AAC at the same bitrate sounds at least as good as MP3. Choose it under Save as.