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Can someone tell me how I can convert an .mp3 audio file to .flac format using ffmpeg? I Googled extensively, but almost all resources point to converting .flac to .mp3, in such a way:

ffmpeg -i "input.flac" -ab 320k -map_meta_data 0:0 "output.mp3"
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    Did you try ffmpeg -i input.mp3 output.flac already?
    – nohillside
    Aug 4, 2012 at 11:52
  • Ummm, I just tried, and it works! Thanks. I thought that I will always have to put some metadata pertaining to the conversion while converting from one format to another.
    – Cupidvogel
    Aug 4, 2012 at 12:00
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    I'll make an answer out of it then. Metadata might improve the conversion process but is not really required usually.
    – nohillside
    Aug 4, 2012 at 12:10
  • Converting from mp3 gets you worse quality, because mp3 is a lossy audio codec. Aug 4, 2012 at 13:58
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    To elaborate on the previous comment: your MP3 file is lossy--meaning that it contains audio artifacts that may or may not be audible to you, but they're there. FLAC is a lossless codec that can preserve the quality of an original recording so that it's exactly as it was e.g. on the CD. But if you convert a poor quality MP3 to Flac, it's garbage in/garbage out--the poor quality doesn't magically get removed by converting to flac. Dec 13, 2012 at 18:44

1 Answer 1

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Did you try ffmpeg -i input.mp3 output.flac already?

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