Audacity Forum

IPod Nanos have audio recording capacity when a mike is connected. Recording output files are .m4a files. These files play well in any player. I can easily convert them to mp3 with Format Factory for example (more than 75% reduction in file size without noticeable reduction of the sound quality, take that Apple!), so it looks like a widely recognized format.

However, I get an Importing Error in Audacity. What is the problem with Audacity? Is it missing some codecs?

m4a is an apple specific format
many (most?) players do NOT play m4as
eg winamp on pcs will not play m4as
nor any other device taht i own

try converting it to mp3 format

m4a is AAC format, more specifically Apple AAC format. Any iPod and Mac can play those and you can get the free QuickTime Player for Windows and then you can play them there, too. If you go for the QuickTime Pro, you can use that to convert the music to other formats.

Macs can't play Windows Media files without help, so they're even.

Convert the work to WAV before editing to avoid multiple different compression damages.

Beware capture devices that restrict you to compressed music formats. Quality goes downhill fast when you jump between multiple compression formats. They're fine for note-taking, lectures, etc.

I'm surprised that FFMpeg couldn't figure out what the file was. I'm pretty sure it speaks AAC.

Koz

You know you can't transfer purchased music like that, right? One of the components of AAC is copy protection.

Koz

So why does Audacity not support this file format. Just because it is Apple? It says that ffmpeg is supposed to import this kind of files.

Will installing extra codecs help? I do have quicktime already installed on my machine.

ppay wrote:So why does Audacity not support this file format. ....

Probably as Koz says because there is copy protection (DRM) buried in the file.

If that is the case then you should be able to play the file and record it in Audacity - not ideal, but workable.

WC