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March 29[edit]

Conversion software M4A to WAV[edit]

Does anyone know of a small, free, simple, safe and malware-free software program that converts M4A to WAV? I'd be grateful. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:51, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A quick ~~Google~~DuckDuckGo gives an online converter, but I've never tried it. A little more effort uses Audacity, but you'll need to include LAME and FFmpeg. Some instructions seem to be still based on Windows only, but Audacity is used cross-OS so you should be OK on other OSs. The reference in the main Audacity doc set is here Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:17, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Martin of Sheffield. I do not want online converters. I would like software for my PC. I've used the wonderful Audacity for years, but it can't seem to read M4A. Also, I don't use iTunes. I really just want software that is known... wait, I'm stupid. We have List of audio conversion software. Sorry all. I have my head in the clouds today. I'll look through those and come back here if none is good. Cheers. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:25, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read the part of the Audacity page entitled "Importing M4A (AAC) and MP4 files"? iTunes may be a source but is not the format. The instructions I posted show that you need to load a couple of libraries -- have you done that? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:30, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm definitely an idiot. VLC converts fine. Been using it for years, never knew. Thank you Martin, and sorry to waste your time. Best, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:32, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"ffmpeg -i file.m4a -vn file.wav" should work. The -vn gets rid of the video stream since .wav is an audio-only format. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 09:10, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, IP. I actually found the right avcodec-52.dll from the audacity-recommended site. I got the wrong one at first, so it wouldn't work. All is well now and VLC is not needed as the converter. Many thanks! Anna Frodesiak (talk) 11:05, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]