.m4a to .mp3 converter

have any of you converted the iTunes .m4a to .mp3's? if so what programs have you used? i found a few free ones on the web but had no idea if they were any good. any help would be great

depends on where it came from and if it is protected. Downloading from iTunes means you have to first remove the copywrite protection. Also Audacity with the lame encoder might work. Fubar media player has a build in converter tool, which will also need the lame encoder.

scott00tj said:

depends on where it came from and if it is protected. Downloading from iTunes means you have to first remove the copywrite protection. Also Audacity with the lame encoder might work. Fubar media player has a build in converter tool, which will also need the lame encoder.

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they were CD that i ripped into i-tunes, i still have the CD's but im trying to burn my songs for a friend

If you burn the CD from Itunes you shoudn't need to conver them. I wouldn't recommend converting from one lossy format to another, it can't help the audio integrity of file.

itunes can convert them. go to preferences> advanced>import tab> file type or something and choose mp3. then right click on the song and hit "convert to Mp3."

GreenGeep said:

itunes can convert them. go to preferences> advanced>import tab> file type or something and choose mp3. then right click on the song and hit "convert to Mp3."

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ok.......thanks, i never really dug into itunes that deep

If you have the CD I would re rip them to MP3. I don't trust iTunes to not add some kind of weird encoding or something on a conversion.

Na. It's for real. no extra crap.

so can you unprotect files downloaded from itunes?

nuttzach said:

so can you unprotect files downloaded from itunes?

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You can burn them to an audio disc and then re-rip them. If you rip them back to MP3 or AAC you will obviously lose some quality since you are burning a compressed file to an audio file (no quality loss there) and then compressing them back to either MP3 or AAC. So in essence you are compressing a compressed file. So if you do this, it is best to re-rip them in Apple Lossless format. That way the file has the same quality that you started out with but will end up being a larger file. The only problem is you will lose the Metadata. Of course that is easy to add back in if you don't have too many to do at the same time.

Clear??

In a nutshell, just burn it to an audio disk and then re-rip it to a lossless format.