Extract Audio from 3G2 to ALAC — Free Online Tool
Extract audio from 3G2 mobile video files and convert it to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) stored in an M4A container. This tool decodes the AAC or MP3 audio track from your 3G2 file and re-encodes it as lossless ALAC — ideal for preserving audio quality in Apple-native environments like iTunes, Music.app, and iOS devices.
to
FFmpeg Command
Copy this command to run the same conversion locally with FFmpeg on your desktop. Download FFmpeg
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Settings
Note: Browser-based encoding uses approximate quality targets. For precise CRF compression, copy the FFmpeg command above and run it on your desktop.
Estimated output:
Conversion Complete!
DownloadHow It Works
3G2 files typically contain AAC or MP3 audio paired with H.264 video, optimized for low-bitrate CDMA mobile transmission. During this conversion, FFmpeg discards the video stream entirely and decodes the compressed audio track from the 3G2 container. That decoded audio is then re-encoded using Apple's ALAC codec and wrapped in an MPEG-4 (.m4a) container. Because the source audio in 3G2 is lossy (AAC or MP3), the output ALAC file will be a lossless representation of that already-lossy signal — meaning no further quality degradation occurs from this conversion step, though the original mobile-network compression artifacts are preserved in the lossless file.
What Each Flag Does
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
ffmpeg
|
Invokes the FFmpeg binary — the open-source multimedia processing engine that powers this conversion both in the browser via WebAssembly and locally on your desktop. |
-i input.3g2
|
Specifies the input file as a 3G2 container, telling FFmpeg to demux its streams — typically an H.264 video track and an AAC audio track optimized for CDMA mobile transmission. |
-vn
|
Disables video output entirely, discarding the H.264 or MJPEG video stream from the 3G2 file so that only the audio track is processed into the ALAC output. |
-c:a alac
|
Sets the audio codec to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), re-encoding the decoded 3G2 audio signal as a lossless bitstream suitable for Apple Music, iTunes, and iOS devices. This flag appears once in the effective command; the duplicate in the raw command is redundant but harmless. |
output.m4a
|
Defines the output file as an M4A file — an MPEG-4 audio container that is the standard packaging format for ALAC, ensuring native compatibility with Apple's ecosystem including iTunes, Music.app, QuickTime, and iOS. |
Common Use Cases
- Archiving audio recordings captured on older CDMA mobile phones (e.g., Verizon or Sprint-era devices) into a lossless format compatible with Apple Music and iTunes libraries
- Extracting voice memos or field recordings saved as 3G2 by legacy Android or feature phones and importing them into GarageBand or Logic Pro via lossless ALAC
- Recovering audio from 3G2 video clips sent via MMS on older networks, preserving the full fidelity of the decoded audio without introducing a second lossy compression stage
- Preparing audio from 3G2 mobile recordings for use in iOS-based podcast or audio editing workflows where ALAC is the preferred lossless interchange format
- Converting a library of archived 3G2 clips from a corporate CDMA deployment into Apple-ecosystem-compatible audio files for long-term lossless storage
- Stripping the video from 3G2 conference call recordings or voicemails to produce clean audio-only ALAC files that integrate natively with Apple's Music app metadata and chapter support
Frequently Asked Questions
No — the output quality is bounded by the original 3G2 audio, which was encoded with a lossy codec (typically AAC at a low bitrate suited for CDMA mobile networks). ALAC is a lossless format, so it perfectly preserves every bit of the decoded audio signal, but it cannot reconstruct the detail that was discarded during the original lossy encoding. What you gain is a guarantee that no additional quality loss occurs from this point forward in your workflow.
3G2 files are intentionally compressed for low-bandwidth CDMA transmission, often containing audio at 64–128 kbps AAC. ALAC stores audio losslessly, so the output file size reflects the full uncompressed PCM audio data with only lossless compression applied — typically 3–5x larger than a comparable AAC file. The 3G2 video stream is discarded, but the audio track still expands significantly when converted from lossy to lossless storage.
3G2 supports both AAC and MP3 (libmp3lame) audio tracks. AAC is the default and most common choice in 3G2 files because it delivers better quality at the low bitrates required for CDMA streaming. If your 3G2 file happens to contain an MP3 audio track, FFmpeg will still decode it correctly and re-encode it to ALAC — the conversion command works for both codec variants without any modification.
FFmpeg will attempt to copy any metadata tags present in the 3G2 container to the output M4A file, since both formats are MPEG-4 based and share compatible metadata structures. However, 3G2 files from mobile devices often carry minimal or no metadata. ALAC in M4A does support rich metadata tags (title, artist, album, etc.), so you can add or edit tags in iTunes, Music.app, or a tag editor after conversion.
ALAC is a lossless codec, so it does not accept a bitrate parameter like AAC or MP3 do — there is no -b:a flag to adjust. The output quality is determined entirely by the decoded input audio signal. If you want to influence the output file size, you would need to switch to a lossy codec like AAC instead of ALAC. For ALAC specifically, the command as shown is the correct and complete form with no quality tuning needed.
Yes, you can adapt the command for batch processing using a shell loop. On Linux or macOS, run: for f in *.3g2; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -vn -c:a alac "${f%.3g2}.m4a"; done. On Windows Command Prompt, use: for %f in (*.3g2) do ffmpeg -i "%f" -vn -c:a alac "%~nf.m4a". This processes every 3G2 file in the current directory and produces a matching ALAC M4A file for each. The browser-based tool on this page handles one file at a time, making the local FFmpeg command especially useful for bulk archiving.
Technical Notes
The FFmpeg command uses -vn to strip the video stream, which is essential here because 3G2 video (H.264 or MJPEG) has no place in an audio-only ALAC output and would cause an error if FFmpeg attempted to include it in the M4A container without a compatible video codec mapping. The -c:a alac flag instructs FFmpeg to use Apple's open-source ALAC encoder, which is natively supported in FFmpeg without any additional libraries. The output container is M4A, which is structurally an MPEG-4 Part 14 file — the same base format as 3G2 — making it a natural container for ALAC. One known limitation is that 3G2 files encoded with very low sample rates (common in voice-optimized mobile recordings, e.g., 8 kHz or 16 kHz) will produce ALAC files at those same low sample rates; ALAC does not upsample. If the 3G2 source contained multiple audio tracks, only the first (default) track is extracted, as both 3G2 and ALAC in M4A have limited multiple-audio-track support in practice. The 3G2-specific -movflags +faststart flag used during 3G2 creation for progressive streaming is irrelevant to the audio-only ALAC output and is correctly omitted from this command.