Introduction to Audio Manipulation on Linux

In this tutorial I will focus mostly on manipulating and converting files to free formats, which in our case will be FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) and Ogg Vorbis (free lossy codec), but support for MP3 is also included where it is the case. These formats are not patented and are free to use without the need to pay for using them. More details on this can be found on the official Xiph.org website.I strongly encourage the use of free formats over those which are proprietary. First of all, using free formats will make your life easier on Linux, since all distributions include audio players which come with support for these by default, without the need to install additional codecs. There is also a drawback to this though: most portable players out there support MP3, but not Ogg. This isn't a very big issue because there are also portable players who support Ogg too in addition to MP3, and there are also solutions like Rockbox , which replaces the firmware on those players who can't read Ogg Vorbis or FLAC and adds support for those too.Lossless formats are the ones which preserve the quality of the sound encoded at the expense of file size. Examples of such formats would be FLAC or WAV. On the other hand, lossy formats use lossy compression algorithms which create smaller files, but discard some of the audio data. However, on bitrates of 128 kbps and above the human ear cannot distinguish whether it's a lossy or a lossless sound they hear. Lossy formats include Ogg Vorbis and MP3. Use lossy to save disk space (for example for your personal music collection or for music on a portable player), and use lossless if you really need to preserve the original quality of the sound.