Convert M4A to MP3 in your browser, for a car stereo, an older MP3 player or an upload form that will take nothing else. M4A is the format of iPhone voice memos, iTunes Store purchases and many phone recorders: an MPEG-4 audio file that almost always holds AAC. This M4A to MP3 converter decodes the AAC and encodes a new MP3 at 128, 192, 256 or 320 kbps, all on your own device, so recordings of meetings, lectures or family never leave it. Drop a whole batch and you get one ZIP back.
How it works
- Drop the M4A files, whether voice memos, iTunes tracks or AAC recordings, up to 200 at once.
- Pick an MP3 bitrate at or above the source: 256 kbps for iTunes music, 128 kbps for speech.
- Convert and download the MP3, or a ZIP of the batch with a report of which files converted.
Questions
- Is M4A better quality than MP3?
- At the same bitrate, AAC, the codec inside most M4A files, usually sounds a little better than MP3. Converting is lossy to lossy: the AAC is decoded and compressed again as MP3, so a little more detail goes. Pick a bitrate at or above the source, 256 kbps for iTunes purchases, and the difference is hard to hear. If the M4A already plays where you need it, keep it.
- Does it keep the title, artist and album art?
- No. The MP3 carries the sound only: the title, artist, album and cover art stored in the M4A are not copied across. The original file name is kept, so voice memos and recordings stay easy to tell apart, but for a music library you will want to re-tag the MP3s in your music player or a tag editor afterwards.
- Can I convert iPhone voice memos to MP3?
- Yes. Voice Memos saves each recording as an M4A file. Share the memos from the app to your computer, drop them all here at once, and they come back as MP3s in one ZIP. Speech needs far less than music, so 128 kbps keeps a memo clear at about 1 MB per minute, and the recordings never leave your devices.
- Does my file get uploaded?
- No. The models and all processing run inside your browser on your own device. You can verify this yourself: open your browser’s DevTools, watch the Network tab, and process a file: there are no uploads. After the first visit most tools also work fully offline.
- Which formats can it read?
- Anything your browser can decode: MP3, WAV, M4A/AAC, OGG, Opus, FLAC and the audio track of MP4/WebM/MOV video. Output is MP3 or WAV, the two formats that open everywhere.
- Does converting to MP3 lose quality?
- MP3 is lossy, so some information is discarded, though at 192 kbps and above most people cannot hear the difference. WAV output is lossless and correspondingly larger. Converting MP3 to WAV does not restore quality that was already gone.