I looked, and it does not look like it, plus when I googled, there were programs you could buy that do that.

I don't know crap about this stuff, though.

In the version I've got, it's an option under Advanced, but it's only available if you activate it in your preferences (or some ludicrous thing). I don't need it per se, but it comes in handy sometimes and I'd hate to have to launch another app just to do that.

I just right-clicked on an .m4a, and had "Convert to mp3" as an option. Clicked it, and it seems to have worked.

I'll tell you about the biggest pain in the ass with v7, though: Everytime I open it, it goes through the process of "Determinging gapless playback" for Every. Damn. Song. In. My. Library.

It slows my computer way down. You can make it stop, and you can tell it to disregard certain albums (theoretically, all of them, by selecting all of them at once). But it still tries to "determine gapless playback" info every time you import or download an mp3.

As a matter of fact -- there it goes again.

Stupid iTunes.

Awesome. Thanks, mudpuppie.

Although the gapless playback thing sounds like a pain. You'd think it could hold onto that info once it had done it once.

Yes, me3. You'd think.

One more thing. [I've actually been reading up on the Gapless thing all morning in an attempt to circumvent it...]

I read comments from people who strongly urge that you backup your system before you upgrade. Some folks said that they had so many problems after upgrading (See: Determining Gapless Playback) that they tried to revert back to an older version. However, after upgrading, iTunes apparently altered their music files so that they couldn't be read by version 6. The only way to fix the problem, they said, was a system restore. (Though this may apply more to Windows?)

Just so's you know.

God, I hate iTunes.

mudpuppie: Are you cancelling the mass 'Determining gapless playback' task every time you start iTunes? If so, might be worth letting it finish once, and then maybe it won't come back again. It definitely shouldn't be doing it every time you start the app.

I've let it run through more than once, chrismear. I agree -- it shouldn't be happening every time. But apparently it's constantly finding stuff it hasn't examined yet.

My itunes 7 will not convert m4ps to mp3's. I can't even burn them to a cd. Spent many frustrating hours digging through multiple sites looking for a solution. jhymn does not work for v7 itunes. In short - I won't be buying anything else from itunes.

Although I just stumbled across this from the dbpoweramp site: http://www.dbpoweramp.com/sveta-portable-audio.htm
that may prove helpful. Haven't had time to check it out yet, maybe later today.

I use iTunes v7.0.1.8 (Windows, so this may all be useless information) and don't have this gapless playback problem thing - it ran once the first time I installed it and then only runs when I import new tracks and then only for the ones I import. I found the function to convert to mp3 under Advanced (convert selection to mp3).

I have used Switch (not exactly this one, but the previous, "non-plus" version) to convert files many times and found it to be one of those rare pieces of software that just works. The free version seems to have been pulled, but appears to be avilable here or here (and many other places, no doubt).