M4A not AAC as stated

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Level 1

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M4A not AAC as stated

Hi,

I have not personally tried to play any of my matched, deleted and re-downloaded music files yet, but I can tell you that - to my surprise

all the music I have re-download from the Match service (after matching) is NOT in AAC format (as stated by Apple) but is M4A.

Not very happy about that! However I can't find ANY reference on the web to the M4A iTunes Match format - everyone says it's AAC.

Can anyone here confirm this is not just happenning with my account?

I'm in the UK BTW.

Also on another note - no matter what I try I cannot get any of my iOS devices to see ANY playlist other than the standart 'most played' etc.

Anyone else have that problem too?

Thanks in advance all 🙂

iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G, iOS 5.0.1, @lightsurgery - is my Twitter

Posted on Jan 19, 2012 5:47 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

mracole

Level 4

1,102 points

Jan 19, 2012 5:52 AM in response to ju5t

M4A is the wrapper. Songs 'matched' by the service will be downloaded as 256 kbps AAC - this can be seen via 'get info' for the Song in question.

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Answer 2

edul

Level 1

5 points

Jan 19, 2012 5:59 AM in response to ju5t

Hi ju5t

I am also in the UK, and can confirm that the m4a files are in AAC format.

You can check this by clicking on a downloaded track and selecting Get Info

The Kind is showing Matched AAC audio file, and Bit Rate is showing 256 Kbhs.

I have downloaded a few songs, and the sound difference is noticable.

Hope this helps,

edul

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Answer 3

ju5t Author

Level 1

0 points

Jan 19, 2012 6:02 AM in response to mracole

Thanks for reply 🙂

mracole wrote:

M4A is the wrapper. Songs 'matched' by the service will be downloaded as 256 kbps AAC - this can be seen via 'get info' for the Song in question.

When you say "M4A" is the wrapper - in essence do you mean I could manually change it to AAC and it would still work without conversion?

FYI here is what I see when I 'get info':

Cheers for the help 🙂

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Answer 4

mracole

Level 4

1,102 points

Jan 19, 2012 6:07 AM in response to ju5t

m4a is the correct file extension for MPEG-4. AAC is the encoding format in use for 'matched' Songs downloaded from the iTunes Match service.

My recommendation would be to continue to use the default 'm4a' file extension since this is what iTunes and other MPEG-4 compatible players will expect.

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Answer 5

ju5t Author

Level 1

0 points

Jan 19, 2012 6:08 AM in response to mracole

Thanks both for your replies and help.

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