Two Guidance | Convert M4A to MP3 with/without iTunes
What is M4A and how to play it
M4A is an audio layer of MPEG 4 movies (non-video) and is encoded with AAC lossy compression. Compared with MP3, M4A produces smaller size and better audio quality than MP3.
M4A can be compatible with most Apple devices, such as iPod, iPad, iPhone. iTunes as the default music player for Apple also can play M4A as easy as possible.
But, if you want to play M4A on Android devices or MP3 player, it would disappoint you. M4A can’t be played on these devices.
And this is also why M4A is better than MP3, but we need to convert M4A file to MP3.
Now, let’s see how to convert M4A audio to MP3 free and safe.
Part1: Convert M4A to MP3 with iTunes
iTunes is not only a music player but also has a built-in conversion tool to rip music. Here are the steps.
Run the latest iTunes on your computer. Don’t forget to connect Wi-Fi.
On the top of the interface, click Edit button, there will have a drop list, click Preferences.
In the General Preferences window, click Import Settings, there will have another window. Choose MP3 Encoder in the Import Using box, and then click OK.
Convert M4A file to MP3 iTunes. On the top of the interface, click File > Convert > Create MP3 Version.
Part2: Convert M4A to MP3 without iTunes
But to be honest, iTunes is not so widely used for everyone. And what can it does for us is limited.
So, I will show you another powerful but easy to use video converter from f2fsoft.com.
It can not only convert M4A file to MP3, but also convert M4B to MP3, WAV to MP3, MOV to MP4, MTS to MP4…
It can trim, crop, add 3D effect, extract subtitles, add watermark to video…
It can be compatible with Windows/Mac system: Mac OS X 10.12 (Sierra), 10.11, 10.10, 10.9, 10.8, 10.7, 10.6.; Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista.
Step1 Click Add File button to load M4A files. You can add M4A file one by one or load M4A folder one time.
Step2 After you loading file to the software, you can see Clip, 3D, and Edit button will light up on the top of the interface.
Click Clip button. You will see another window where you can adjust your audio length.
Step3 After doing these changes to your audio. Don’t forget the most important thing: set output audio format.
On the bottom of the interface, you can see Profile and Destination. Click the Profile line, you will see a pop-up list, choose General Audio > MP3 as the output format.
Tip: If you want to customize the audio parameters (encoder, sample rate, bitrate and channel) just click Settings button.
Step4 Finally, click the big Convert button.
Click Preview, you can see the output video/audio before converting.
Click Merge into one file, you can compress all video/audio files into one.