Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2019 March 29

= March 29 =

Conversion software M4A to WAV
Does anyone know of a small, free, simple, safe and malware-free software program that converts M4A to WAV? I'd be grateful. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:51, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
 * A quick Google DuckDuckGo gives an online converter, but I've never tried it. A little more effort uses Audacity, but you'll need to include LAME and FFmpeg.  Some instructions seem to be still based on Windows only, but Audacity is used cross-OS so you should be OK on other OSs.  The reference in the main Audacity doc set is here  Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:17, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi Martin of Sheffield. I do not want online converters. I would like software for my PC. I've used the wonderful Audacity for years, but it can't seem to read M4A. Also, I don't use iTunes. I really just want software that is known... wait, I'm stupid. We have List of audio conversion software. Sorry all. I have my head in the clouds today. I'll look through those and come back here if none is good. Cheers. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:25, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Did you read the part of the Audacity page entitled "Importing M4A (AAC) and MP4 files"? iTunes may be a source but is not the format. The instructions I posted show that you need to load a couple of libraries -- have you done that? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:30, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I'm definitely an idiot. VLC converts fine. Been using it for years, never knew. Thank you Martin, and sorry to waste your time. Best, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:32, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

"ffmpeg -i file.m4a -vn file.wav" should work. The -vn gets rid of the video stream since .wav is an audio-only format. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 09:10, 30 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you, IP. I actually found the right avcodec-52.dll from the audacity-recommended site. I got the wrong one at first, so it wouldn't work. All is well now and VLC is not needed as the converter. Many thanks! Anna Frodesiak (talk) 11:05, 30 March 2019 (UTC)