M4A File Format

With the digital revolution that swept the world, there was a flood of new audio and video file extensions that were developed. One such format is the M4A file format that has led to a considerable amount of confusion among people who are not familiar with Apple's media applications.

What is M4A file Format?

M4A is a lossy compression file format that is used for audio files. It is actually the same format as MP4, but specifically named differently to distinguish purely audio files from MP4 files that could be audio or video files. So M4A stands for MPEG-4 audio files that have AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) encoded audio packaged inside an MPG envelope. The M4A file extension was created by Apple to distinguish digital audio files of the MP4 type. You could say that M4A is Apple's proprietary file format.

Advanced audio encoding (AAC) is the encoding technology that includes other file extensions, besides M4A, like M4B, M4P, M4R, M4V, 3GP, AAC and MP4. Files with all these extensions are compact and are widely used by various media player programs.

M4A file type is also known as an Apple lossless audio file. The beauty of the AAC format is that it gives you excellent audio or video quality, though the size of the AAC encoded files is a lot smaller than other bulky file formats. M4A files are often used in streaming audio online.

Due to the compactness of the M4A files, they are often used on portable music devices that have a limited space. However, if you are using an audio player, that is not compatible with M4A, you might want to convert it to other compatible file formats.

How to Play Audio With M4A File Format

M4A files are created by Apple Lossless Video Codec. This file format can be played by many programs like iTunes, Apple Quicktime Player and Windows Media Player (With appropriate codec installed). It is the default audio file format used on Apple iPods and Apple iPhones. Any program that has compatibility with the Apple Lossless Audio Codec can play these files. The VLC media player, an Opensource media player can play M4A files.

Conversion

If you do not have a compatible program that can play M4A files, you can always convert M4A to MP3 or WAV using appropriate converter programs. This can be done using Apple's iTunes program if you are a Mac user.

To convert M4A files to MP3 files, download the iTunes program and install it from the official Apple website. It is a freely downloadable program that has an inbuilt facility to convert M4A files to other formats. Apple iTunes has the facility to directly convert your M4A files into WAV when it imports those songs in the iTunes library. To do that, you only need to change the importing format to WAV. However, WAV is a comparatively bulky format and you might consider converting it to other compressed file formats like mp3.

In case you do not have iTunes, you can use other freely downloadable programs that can convert M4A files into any other file format. Search for 'M4A Converter' on the Google Search Engine. Just make sure that these programs are genuine before downloading them.

One such program is BonkEnc@copy which is a versatile converter that can convert your M4A files to any other file format. Just download BonkEnc@copy and use it to get your job done.An M4A file is something that can easily be converted to other forms through use of appropriate software.