What actually survives a conversion, tested. Updated July 2026.
Converting one file is trivial. Converting three hundred and discovering afterwards that the artwork is gone, the track numbers are scrambled, or everything landed in one flat folder is the part that costs an evening. Most of that is avoidable if you know which losses are real and which are folklore.
Tested, not assumed
"Tags get lost in conversion" is repeated everywhere. We tagged a three-second WAV with a title, artist and album and converted it three ways with ffmpeg 8.1.1 on macOS 26.5.2, Apple silicon:
So for the basic fields, a competent converter does the right thing unasked. The warning is not wrong, it is just aimed at the wrong target: what actually goes missing is embedded artwork, disc and track numbers on some format pairs, sort names, and anything format-specific with no equivalent on the other side. Convert one file and inspect it before you commit the folder — that single check is worth more than any advice on this page.
The other two losses
MP3 to AAC re-encodes audio that already threw detail away. It is audible on some material and inaudible on most, but it is never an improvement. Convert from the lossless source — WAV, AIFF, FLAC — whenever one exists, and keep it for the next time a format changes.
Three hundred conversions with no output rule is a folder you tidy up by hand afterwards. Every tool below can put files somewhere sensible; almost none of them do it by default. Set the destination and the naming pattern first.
Picking a tool
Set the import encoder in Settings, then File → Convert. Free, installs nothing, reaches only files you have imported, and uses the encoders Apple ships. For turning one album into MP3s it is hard to argue with.
Free and open source, and the long-standing choice for exact, bit-accurate conversion with cue sheets and accurate ripping. The interface shows its age and the configuration lives in a long preferences window, but for a careful one-off it remains hard to beat.
Free, on macOS, Windows and Linux. MP3, AAC, WMA, Ogg and the lossless formats up to 32-bit, several files at once, folder structure preserved, filenames built from ID3 tags, CUE splitting, and export straight into the Music app. It overlaps with ours on most of what people actually need, and it costs nothing.
Free and open source, with command-line conversion that can be repeated in scripts. for f in *.wav; do ffmpeg -i "$f" "${f%.wav}.mp3"; done. The cost is that you write it, and that you remember what the flags meant when the folder structure changes.
To Audio Converter accepts over 200 input formats including video and files it does not recognise. Pro Audio Converter exposes the full encoder options per codec and writes CAF. Both are native Mac apps; neither publishes a price on its product page, so check before you commit.
€15, once. Create several outputs from each source in one run: WAV, AIFF, CAF, AAC, Apple Lossless or FLAC. Set sample rate and dither options and compare a preview before processing the folder. Output folders and filenames follow one rule you set. Runs entirely on your Mac, macOS 14+, Apple silicon or Intel.
For one output format, a free converter may cover the task. PX7 Audio Convert supports separate output settings for several formats in the same run, such as a WAV master, a FLAC archive and an AAC listening copy.
PX7 Digital makes PX7 Audio Convert, so this page is not neutral. The conversion test above was run on this machine on 31 July 2026 with the versions named; details for the other tools come from their own sites on the same date, and where a vendor does not publish a price this page says so rather than guessing. Tell us if something is out of date.