[FFmpeg-user] Convert WAV to FLAC

[Ferdi Scholten]

I'm using the command below to convert from wav to flac:
> ffmpeg -i "input.wav" -af aformat=s16:44100 "output.flac"
>
> The bit-depth and sample_rate are ok, but is the command converting the
> audio from CBR to VBR.
>
> What should I add in the above command, or what command should I use for
> the audio to keep the
> CBR format in the FLAC output?
>
>
Flac is by definition VBR, anything else would just be waste of space. 
It only just takes the amount of bytes needed for the specified 
compression level. This can be set between 1 and 12. All levels are 
lossless, the encoder just uses better and more computational expensive 
algorithms for encoding. With modern processors level 12 is relatively 
fast while in the early days of the standard (20 years ago) that level 
would exceed the playing time by several magnitudes. It did however not 
matter for decoding time. Default compression value in ffmpeg is 5

So for maximum lossless compression use

ffmpeg -i "input.wav" -af aformat=s16:44100 -c:a flac -compression_level 12 "output.flac"