Difference between AAC and m4a files, converting from AAC to useable format

Question

Difference between AAC and m4a files, converting from AAC to useable format

Does anyone know the difference between AAC and m4a files? iTunes has an option to use an AAC encoder to compress CD files, but this creates an m4a file not an AAC file. I just got some actual AAC files and iTunes cannot read these, is there a way to convert from AAC to a format that iTunes recognizes? Thanks

HP, Windows XP

Posted on Nov 30, 2005 8:46 PM

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Answer 1

narya

Level 4

3,221 points

Nov 30, 2005 11:52 PM in response to resonant musician

AAC is the name of the MPEG-2 compression format usually used by iTunes, .m4a is the corresponding file extension iTunes is using (and expecting). So basically there is no "difference" between AAC and m4a files.

If you have music files with the extension .aac, just try renaming them to .m4a and see if iTunes can play them thus.

Alexander.

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Answer 2

Otto42

Level 6

9,070 points

Dec 1, 2005 11:23 AM in response to resonant musician

iTunes uses AAC data wrapped in an MPEG 4 container file. If you got some *.AAC files, and they're just raw AAC files, then you need to wrap them in an MPEG 4 container. The only way I know to do this is using the foobar 2000 program. You can find more information at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org and http://www.foobar2000.org

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