M4A files: Worth it?

[Bobmuhthol]

Is MPEG 4 encoding any better than MPEG 3? And is there a free converter if so?

[Trinitis]

Last I remember, Mpeg Layer 4 are Video files, commonly used for DVD.

Though that was a while back and my mind don't always work that well.

[Edited on 3-26-2005 by Adredrin]

[Bobmuhthol]

MPEG 4 is new; it's supposedly a more efficient method of compressing audio with better quality and less space than MP3s. Their extensions are .m4a and .mp4, but it's suggested that .m4a be used with music.

[Bobmuhthol]

Did some Googling. There's MPEG 4 Audio and MPEG 4 Video, both are .mp4, and that is why .m4a should be used as it can only be audio.

[Trinitis]

Originally posted by Bobmuhthol
Did some Googling. There's MPEG 4 Audio and MPEG 4 Video, both are .mp4, and that is why .m4a should be used as it can only be audio.

Ahh, makes sense. Cool beans. Carry on :)

[Bobmuhthol]

It turns out the LimeWire player and Winamp 5.01 do not support .m4a. I guess I'll just wait until it gets more popular (though I hear it's supported in Winamp 5.02). I'm looking forward to M4A players so I can get all my songs into 1 GB.

[Bobmuhthol]

I found a M4A converter trial. Easy CD-DA Extractor. I'm working on two projects now: convert my library to M4A and duplicate my library as 64kbps MP3 so everything fits on a 1GB flash drive for my MP3 player.