Convert M4A to AAC - online and free
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How to convert a M4A to a AAC file?
- Choose the M4A file that you want to convert.
- Select AAC as the the format you want to convert your M4A file to.
- Click "Convert" to convert your M4A file.
Zamzar Pro Tip: The default player for M4A files is through Apple iTunes, however you can also use Quicktime.
Step 1 - Select a file(s) to convert
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M4A (Audio)
| File extension | .m4a |
| Category | Audio File |
| Description | M4A audio files were developed to enable easy sharing of digital music, audiobook content, podcasts. It was generally intended as the successor to MP3 and the file quality is better and file sizes smaller compared to MP3 files. M4A files sound better than MP3 files when encoded at the same bit rate due to some of the enhancements. It's the default audio format for Apple products, Nintendo products, Android, Blackberry, PlayStation, and many in-dash music systems in cars. |
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| Technical Details | M4A is a file encoded with advanced audio coding (AAC) and is implemented with AAC compression standards or ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) specifications. This effectively means that they can be decoded back to their original quality they were at the point of compression. It was developed by Apple and it only contains audio data, rather than MP4 which contains both audio and video. An added benefit of M4A files are that they do not carry any Digital Rights Management protection. |
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| Developed by | Apple |
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AAC (Audio)
| File extension | .aac |
| Category | Audio File |
| Description | AAC is similar to MP3. It essentially cuts out, or compresses, information that the human ear cannot pick up thereby making digital files smaller and more easily managed and therefore quicker to download. AAC is about half the size of MP3 but with better quality. It is at least one tenth the size of CD digital data. Apple are the biggest users of this format and if you have an iPod or iPhone then you will have come across this format as it is iTunes default audio format. |
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| Technical Details | AAC is similar in concept to MP3 but goes further. It too compresses digital audio files but to a bigger degree. It is also part of the MPEG-4 standard, it is most widely used to create small digital audio files. The current variant is specified in ISO/IEC standard 14496-3. Like MP3, AAC is a lossy algorithm. The human hearing system cannot hear quiet sounds in the presence of loud sounds of a similar frequency; for example, a voice conversation cannot be heard while an aeroplane flies low overhead. This is known as auditory masking, this allows the discarding of data with minimal loss of quality. |
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| Developed by | A combination of Fraunhofer IIS, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Dolby and Sony Corporation |
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Convert M4A file
Using Zamzar, it is possible to convert M4A files to a variety of other formats
- m4a to aac (Advanced Audio Coding File)
- m4a to ac3 (AC3 Audio File)
- m4a to flac (Free Lossless Audio Codec)
- m4a to m4r (iPhone Ringtone File)
- m4a to mp3 (Compressed audio file)
- m4a to mp4 (MPEG-4 Video File)
- m4a to ogg (Ogg Vorbis Compressed Audio File)
- m4a to wav (Windows audio file)
- m4a to wma (Windows Media Audio)