M4A to MP3

What this does

M4A is the same MP4 container with only an audio track inside it. It is what an iPhone voice memo, a Voice Memos export, and most of an iTunes library are saved as — and it is the format that older car stereos, DJ software and upload forms still refuse.

M4A is what an iPhone voice memo and most iTunes audio are saved as. Plenty of sites and older players still refuse it.

The two different things called M4A

An M4A holds either AAC, which is lossy, or ALAC, which is Apple’s lossless codec. They share an extension and nothing else. Converting AAC to MP3 is a lossy-to-lossy pass, so pick 192 kbps or higher and the difference stays inaudible. Converting ALAC to MP3 is the first lossy step that file has ever taken, and it is worth 256 or 320 kbps if you are keeping it. You do not have to work out which one you have: the converter reads the file and handles either.

Nothing is uploaded

The conversion happens inside this page. Your file is read by the browser, converted here, and saved straight back to your downloads. It is never sent to a server, so there is no upload wait and no size cap beyond what your own device can hold.

Open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the network panel, and convert a file. You will see the converter itself download once, and no upload of your audio at all. That is the whole difference between this and a site that converts on a server, and what that difference actually means is worth a read.

The first conversion is slower

The converter is about 32 MB and downloads the first time you use it, which is the one moment this page is not instant. After that it is cached, and later conversions start immediately, even offline. So do later visits.

Questions