fre:ac snapshot 20150705 has been released and is now available for download!

This release enables the parallel conversion mode introduced in 20140921 by default. The parallel mode runs multiple file conversions at the same time on multi-core processors, thus speeding up conversion times. It will make use of all physical CPU cores by default and can be configured to also use virtual/HT cores.

fre:ac 20150705 also introduces support for verifying lossless output files such as FLAC or ALAC. This can be enabled in the configuration dialog and will add a verification step for each conversion to a lossless format where the output file is decoded again and compared to the original input.

The new release also fixes some issues, especially with the OS X version:

• Crashes when trying to add audio CD contents on OS X
• Distorted audio playback on OS X
• Ejecting CDs did not work on OS X and Linux

Several minor issues are fixed in addition to this and codecs are updated to their latest versions.

Please be aware that this is a preview release which is not meant for daily work and might contain bugs. Especially with the conversion engine being almost completely rewritten in this release, new issues may have been introduced. Please report issues on the SourceForge bug tracker or by email to support@freac.org.

The new snapshot is available in the downloads section.

fre:ac version 1.0.23 has been released on 30th November 2014. This service release updates codecs and translations and fixes several bugs that have been found in earlier versions.

In particular, fre:ac 1.0.23 updates the FLAC codec to version 1.3.1 which includes some important fixes for security issues. The new release also fixes instabilities in the MP3 decoder and WMA tag writer and adds support for opening Windows Wave files with floating point data. The user interface is now available in Basque and Serbian (Cyrillic) language; several other translations have been updated.

Upgrading to fre:ac v1.0.23 is strongly recommended to all users of earlier versions. You can download it at the downloads section of this site.

A new development release, fre:ac snapshot 20141005, is now available for download!

This preview release fixes several problems found in snapshot 20140921:

• Messed up sound when decoding Ogg Vorbis files in parallel mode
• Problems related to writing chapter marks to FLAC and Ogg files (including Opus and Speex)
• Incompatibility of the 32 bit Windows version with certain CPUs (at least Athlon 64 X2, but possibly others as well)
• Failure to detect number of CPU cores on PowerMacs and FreeBSD

The new release also improves joblist sorting performance and makes the "Eject CD after ripping" option work in parallel mode.

Upgrading to snapshot 20141005 is strongly recommended to users of older snapshot versions. Everyone else, please remember that it is still an alpha version and not meant to be used for daily work!

The new snapshot is available in the downloads section.

fre:ac snapshot 20140921 is now available for download!

This new preview version features great performance, stability and usability improvements for OS X, general usability improvements such as the ability to sort the joblist as well as a libsndfile base encoder component that enables output of additional simple audio formats like AIFF, Wave64 or RIFF 64.

fre:ac 20140921 also adds an experimental parallel conversion mode that allows to make better use of multiple CPU cores. Using parallel conversions, the new snapshot can be several times faster than previous releases. At this time, the parallel mode is disabled by default and has to be activated in the configuration dialog. It will replace the standard sequential mode in a future release.

Besides these improvements, the new snapshot also fixes various bugs and other issues. Please remember that it is still an alpha version, though, and not meant to be used for daily work!

The new snapshot is available in the downloads section.

The fre:ac Translation Kit, a package containing everything needed to create, update and test translations for fre:ac, is now available at the Translation Status page.

Please help the fre:ac project to support more languages! Even though fre:ac is already available in 40 languages, many others are still missing and some existing translations are incomplete and need an update:

Languages that are missing (selection):

Filipino, Indian languages (Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil etc.), Indonesian, Kazakh, Malay, Persian, Thai, Uzbek

Currently incomplete translations:

Korean, Hebrew, Greek, Esperanto

fre:ac needs your help to fill that gap and make translations for these languages available to all users. If you would like to contribute an update or a new translation, please download the translation kit at the Translation Status page. It includes all the resources and instructions to edit existing and new translations for fre:ac and other components like the installer.

fre:ac version 1.0.22 has been released on 28th July 2014. This service release updates codecs and translations and fixes several bugs that have been found in earlier versions.

In particular, the new release updates the Ogg Vorbis codec to the 2014 version of aoTuV 6.03 and adds Afrikaans language support. It fixes two possible crash issues, blurry text on Windows 8 computers with high DPI displays, the last track of CD-Extra discs being reported two seconds too long as well as several minor problems.

Upgrading to fre:ac v1.0.22 is recommended to all users of earlier versions. You can download it at the downloads section of this site.