[Athen] Seeking recommendations for M4A converter

[Joseph Polizzotto MA]

Debee,

If you don't mind working from the command line, you can also use FFmpeg
<https://www.ffmpeg.org/>. You can type a command like the following in the
terminal to get your desired file:

ffmpeg -i input.m4a output.wav

You can also try converting directly to MP3 from M4A and see if the quality
is still too poor for your needs. Here is a command that can do that;

ffmpeg -i input.m4a -acodec libmp3lame -ab 256k output.mp3

It is possible to write a short script that does this process in a loop for
all of the files in a directory.

I came across this article that touches on the decline of usability of many
desktop applications <https://datagubbe.se/decusab/>. I thought you could
relate to a lot of what is said there. Those are also arguments in favor of
using the command line! (BTW I am not referring to any desktop applications
mentioned in this thread).

HTH,

Joseph

On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 7:43 AM Deborah Armstrong <armstrongdeborah at fhda.edu>
wrote:


> Now that we have so many webinars/courses in zoom, I’m seeking a simple

> converter for Windows that will create .wav files from .M4A. The editor I

> prefer to use likes wav files or Mp3, but if you convert to mp3 you reduce

> the audio quality just a bit, so I’d prefer to convert to wav, edit it and

> then convert to Mp3.

>

>

>

> When I record lectures, my main tool for note-taking is to edit the

> recording about 75% so I have only a short audio file to retain.

>

>

>

> This is also useful when I’m working on a recording someone else made.

>

>

>

> --Debee

>

>

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