What is a M4A file?
Apple's audio format with superior quality at small sizes
An M4A audio file is a lossless audio format (and encoding algorithm) created by Apple and utilized on a variety of Apple products (including iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTunes, and Quicktime products). The m4a codec has been open-sourced so it is quite popular. M4A files are usually encoded with Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) which was originally designed to be the successor to MP3.
Both MP3 and M4A files are used for audio-only files, and are both unprotected (free from DRM features). Protected files will have a *.m4p file extension. AAC or M4A files do have better audio quality when compared to MP3 files when encoded at the same bitrate due to some of the codec’s improvements such as compression based on perception and a smaller block size for changing audio sounds and signals.
