MetaChat - m4a files.

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27 December 2005

m4a files. →[More:]Can anyone read them? Everything I have is an m4a, and I'd like to share.

post by: interrobang at: 19:33 | 14 comments

I can read them. I use foobar2000. It can read everything.

posted by panoptican 27 December | 19:39

iTunes can read them.

posted by YouCanCallMeAl 27 December | 19:51

iTunes can read them.

Yeah, I know (I have iTunes, and I'm on a Mac; that's the problem), but I'm always afraid to "yousendit" music here, because not everyone has iTunes.

I'm just trying to get a feel for how many people would actually be able to listen to songs I could post.

posted by interrobang 27 December | 20:03

I think the majority of current software players can handle them okay. On the other hand, I'm not so sure about portable MP3 players. I'm pretty sure my iaudio U2 can't do M4As. And I like to put particularly good mecha/mefi mixes on my portable player.

posted by selfnoise 27 December | 20:06

I tried to send some stuff from iTunes and got some odd XML... stuff. Now, that might just be 'cause I'm ~~stupid~~ technologically challenged, but I bring it up in case it might be relevant.

posted by bmarkey 27 December | 20:08

I really love foobar2000: takes about 5 seconds to download, reads everything, not particularly resource intensive, doesn't try to take over every single file format by default (I'm looking at you, Winamp) simple interface...it's good.

posted by PinkStainlessTail 27 December | 20:08

I let my P2P look at the iTunes library, so there's a lot of m4a's I'm putting out there passively -- but if I'm uploading to share, I convert to MP3 first. It only takes a moment longer.

BonkEnc and Audacity are good converters.

posted by stilicho 27 December | 20:22

So, I guess if I have a song I want to share, I'll just post it with the warning that it's an m4a, and all the haters can just suck it?

On preview (that's the first time I've ever said that!) I'll check out those programs, stilicho.

posted by interrobang 27 December | 20:23

You can use iTunes to covert to MP3, of course, so long as you don't mind having duplicate files. I do it all the time for my lazy Windows friends. :-)

posted by Cryptical Envelopment 27 December | 20:44

Er, what you said. :-)

posted by Cryptical Envelopment 27 December | 20:45

I've never used foobar2000, but I can vouch for mediaplayerclassic along with the klite codec megapack.

posted by puke & cry 27 December | 20:46

Why does iTunes fail to import certain video formats, without even giving an error?

I'm trying to import .mov and .mp4 created with videolan, and nothing happens.

posted by orthogonality 27 December | 22:18

That's an whole other question and I have no answer.

posted by Cryptical Envelopment 27 December | 22:30

Yeah, for all the times that the iTunes UI gets in the way, it just fails silently when it can't import something. Happens to music, too.

posted by stilicho 28 December | 01:26

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