00audio

M4A

MPEG-4 Audio

M4A is AAC audio in an MP4 container — what iTunes, Apple Music and iPhone voice memos produce. It sounds better than MP3 at the same bitrate but is refused by a long tail of older hardware.

Extension: .m4a
MIME type: audio/mp4

01 Convert M4A to something else

M4A to MP3 Voice memos and iTunes audio, playable everywhere.
M4A to WAV The format speech models and editors expect.

02 Convert something else to M4A

MP3 to M4A Better codec, though a second generation on an MP3 source.
MP4 to M4A The same AAC audio, just without the video.

03 Related formats

MP3
WAV
AAC
FLAC
OGG
Opus

Opening a .m4a file

If you landed here because something handed you a .m4a file and nothing on your machine will open it, converting it to a format you already have a reader for is usually faster than installing new software. Every conversion above runs in this browser — the file is not uploaded, so it works on a locked-down work machine and on a file you are not allowed to send anywhere.