The Ultimate guide to Audio Conversion in Linux Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of the Ultimate guide to Audio Conversion. After covering the simpler GUI tools in the last article, this article will showcase a powerful command line tool called pacpl.


All download links are provided at the end of the article.


If you haven't read Part 1, you can read it here


4. Pacpl

Pacpl is an extremely powerful sound conversion script. You can convert entire folders of audio into a wide variety of audio formats. It supports AAC, AC3, AIFF, APE, AU, AVR, BONK, CAF, CDR, FAP, FLA, FLAC, IRCAM, LA, LPAC, M4A, MAT, MAT4, MAT5, MMF, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, MPP, NIST, OFR, OFS, OGG, PAC, PAF, PVF, RA, RAM, RAW, SD2, SF, SHN, SMP, SND, SPX, TTA, VOC, W64, WAV, WMA, and WV. It can also convert the following video formats: RM, RV, ASF, DivX, MPG, MKV, MPEG, AVI, MOV, OGM, QT, VCD, SVCD, M4V, NSV, NUV, PSP, SMK, VOB, FLV, and WMV. So pretty much every single format out there can be converted using this script.

Pacpl is a command line tool, but it is quite easy to use. After installing Pacpl, just typing pacpl into the terminal will give you a short guide to get started with.

If you would like to see the full list of options, they can be accessed by typing: pacpl -l

This will give you a long list of options that can be used. However, to give you an idea of how this program can be used, let's go through an example that requires the use of several of these options.

Example

The goal:

• Convert all audio located in Sample Folder along with its subdirectories from mp3 to ogg.
• Bit rate of 128kbps
• Move the converted files to another folder.

The syntax that is given by Pacpl is:

pacpl --to <format> <options> [file(s){directory(s)]

Therefore, I used the following command to accomplish the goal:

Some things to notice:

• --bitrate specified the Bit rate that the converted file would have.
• -r specified that the folder was to be searched recursively. This means that if you have specified a folder, the subfolders will also be searched for sound files and they will be converted as well.
• --preserve is an option that ensures that your folder structure is preserved in the output folder. The converted files will be placed in your original folder structure.
• --outdir specifies where your converted files will be moved.
• Using a forward slash as in Sample\ Folder allows us to specify a folder which has more than one word in its name.

Mission Accomplished:

If you use Dolphin as a file manager, you can quickly convert sound files using Pacpl by right clicking on the sound files that you wish to convert.

You can then select an output file and also select the quality settings. 

One drawback of this method is that you cannot use the preserve option. Thus, this method is excellent for some quick conversions but if you would like to use specific options for converting your files, command line is the way to go.

Links
Pacpl
Ultimate Guide to Audio Conversion in Linux Part 1