5 ways to convert audio files on Linux
Do you have a music collection on your Linux PC? Do you want to convert the files to a different format? Not sure how to do it? Follow along with this list as we show you 5 ways to convert audio files on Linux!
1. Ciano
Ciano is a pretty easy to use the program, and if you’re new to Linux, it’s one of the best ways to convert audio files. To start the conversion process, you’ll need to have the app installed. To install it, start by enabling the Flatpak runtime on your computer. Then, open up a terminal window and use the Flatpak commands to install the app.
Note: Don’t like using the terminal? Follow our guide to learn how to install Flatpaks without using the terminal.
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak install flathub com.github.robertsanseries.ciano
Once the app is installed, follow the step-by-step instructions below to learn how to convert your audio files on Linux with Ciano.
Step 1: Launch the Ciano application by searching for it in the app menu.
Step 2: Look to the left-hand sidebar of Ciano and look for the “Music” section. Then, click on it with the mouse. Once you’ve selected the “Music” section, Ciano will reveal several different conversion formats. Select the one that you would like to use.
Step 3: After clicking on the format you would like to convert your file to, a pop-up window will appear. Click on the “Add file” button to add the music file to Ciano using the UI.
Step 4: When you’ve added the music file to Ciano, look for the “Start conversion” button, and click on it with the mouse to begin the conversion process.
When Ciano is done converting you will get a notification that the conversion process is complete.
2. Gnac
Another excellent way to convert audio files on Linux is with the Gnac tool. To start the process, open up a terminal window and use the commands below to learn how to install Gnac on your computer.
Ubuntu/Debian
Sadly, there is not a current version of Gnac for Ubuntu or Debian. It is best to use another converter covered in this list.
Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S gnac
Fedora
sudo dnf install gnac
OpenSUSE
Gnac is not available for OpenSUSE at this time. Use another converter covered in this list.
Source Code
If you’re an Ubuntu, Debian or OpenSUSE Linux user and you want to use Gnac and can’t install it through traditional means, grab the source code here and compile it.
Once you’ve gotten Gnac open, follow the step-by-step instructions below to convert audio files.
Step 1: Find the “+” button in the top left-hand cover of Gnac, and click on it with the mouse. Then, use the UI to find the audio file you wish to convert to add it to Gnac.
Step 2: Look to the bottom left-hand corner of Gnac, and change the format from OGA to whatever format you prefer.
Step 3: Locate the “Convert” button, and click on it with the mouse. By selecting “Convert” you will begin the process of converting your audio file.
When the process is done, you will see “Conversion completed”.
3. Sound Converter
A third way you can convert audio files on Linux is with the Sound Converter application. It’s an excellent tool that we’ve covered extensively in the past in other articles.
Sound Converter is great to use because it has support for a wide variety of formats, and even can convert video to audio. If you want to learn how to use the Sound Converter program to convert your favorite audio files on Linux, head over to this guide here.
4. FFaudioConverter
FFMpeg is one of the most powerful multimedia transcoding tools on all of Linux. It’s often used as the backend to a whole lot of programs. However, this tool isn’t easy to use, and beginners often have issues with it. That’s where FFaudioConverter comes in. It uses FFMpeg on the backend and gives you a nice UI to use to convert sound files.
To start the conversion process, you must install FFaudioConverter on your Linux PC. Follow this guide here to learn how to set up the Flatpak runtime on your computer. Then, use the commands below to install FFaudioConverter as a Flatpak.
Note: don’t want to install Flatpaks via the terminal? Follow our guide here to learn how to install Flatpaks without the terminal.
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo flatpak install flathub com.github.Bleuzen.FFaudioConverter
Once the app is installed, follow the step-by-step instructions below.
Step 1: Launch the app. When the app is open, launch your Linux file manager and drag an audio file onto the FFaudioConverter window.
Step 2: Locate the “Settings” button, and click it with the mouse. Then, change the “Format” and “Quality” to suit your needs.
Step 3: Click on the “Convert” button to convert the file.
When the conversion process is complete, you will see “Done” in the queue.
5. FFMPeg
While beginners may not like using FFMpeg, it’s still a powerful program that can easily be used to convert audio files. To convert audio files with FFMpeg, start by installing it using the commands below.
Ubuntu
sudo apt install ffmpeg
Debian
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S ffmpeg
Fedora
sudo dnf install ffmpeg
OpenSUSE
sudo zypper install ffmpeg
Once the app is installed, open up a terminal window. Then, use the ffmpeg command to convert your audio file. Be sure to edit the command example below to suit your needs.
ffmpeg -i audio-file.format -f format audio-file.newformat
If you are having issues using FFMPeg, do not worry! They have a dedicated user manual that goes over in-depth on how to use the program. To access the manual, open up a terminal window and run the man ffmpeg command. Alternatively, save the manual to a text file with the command below.
man ffmpeg >> ~/ffmpeg-manual.txt
From here, you can open up the text file and read it at your leisure. Also, be sure to check out the “help” function. To access the “help” function, open up a terminal window and use the command below.
ffmpeg --help
Like the manual, you can save this to a text file with:
ffmpeg --help >> ~/ffmpeg-help.txt
Conclusion
In this list, we went over 5 ways you can take an audio file and convert it from one format to another. If you were having issues figuring out how to convert audio files on your Linux PC, hopefully, this list showed you that audio conversion is easier than it looks!
