ffmpeg to convert from flac to wav

Question

I need to convert a flac file to a wav file without changing sample rate and bit depth. As far as I know changing these properties may distort the audio, so how do i specify them not to be changed?

Also, is there any way to prevent metadata to be written to the output file?

ffmpeg -i output.wav may work for you – rogerdpack Apr 28 '14 at 15:59 — rogerdpack, Apr 28 '14 at 15:59

score 43 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

43

As rogerdpack commented, the command line:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.flac output.wav

should do exactly what you want.

Addressing your concerns about keeping the resulting audio intact, FLAC is a lossless format and decoding it to raw PCM stored in a WAV file will keep perfect fidelity. The only thing you might have to be concerned about is if your FLAC file is a higher than normal bit depth like 24, 32 or 64 bits per sample, or has a crazy multichannel configuration. I haven't kept up on whether FFmpeg supports all those combinations. However, most FLAC files are just 16-bit, 44.1 kHz audio files, so this shouldn't be an issue.

About scrubbing metadata, check this Superuser question.

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

Community

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answered Apr 30 '14 at 05:03

Multimedia Mike

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Thanks for the answer, but i'have already figured out that bit depth converts to 16bit from higher, so I need to set it manually. – user3580089 May 01 '14 at 17:12
Any idea what version of PCM is ffmpeg using? (i.e. `pcm_s16le`, `pcm_f64le`) – themihai May 18 '17 at 00:36
Depends on what format you ask it to use; if you don't, it uses whatever is appropriate based on the input and output. – Multimedia Mike May 19 '17 at 02:43

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 28 '14 at 12:05

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sox infile.flac outfile.wav

should do exactly that, without copying metadata.

I used it to convert back a sound that grip converted from wav to flac and got exactly the same file as the original wav.

answered Sep 28 '14 at 12:05

Laurent

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ffmpeg to convert from flac to wav

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