M4a to MP3?

[Anyanka]

I have a cheap MP3 player in my car, and would like to put some of my iTunes stuff on it, but can't figure out how to make them fit. Does anyone know how to convert the .m4a files, or if there is any freeware that is actually free (I've tried out a few, but they're all just fronts for buy-me-now-if-you-actually-want-the-whole-song)?

[plunk111]

If you go to "Advanced" in iTunes, select "Create MP3 Version". That should do the trick!

[highwood]

I think perhaps you can do it in iTunes - export somewhere in the menu system

If not try:
Audacity is a good open source audio editing program. You will have to do a little extra work so that it save in some formats.

Check out: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... es#foreign

If the files have some sort of DRM you may have to export them from iTunes - to AIFF perhaps and then open with Audacity - I'm not an expert here, I do not have any 'protected' .m4a files just my own recordings and 'real CDs'

<start_OT_rant> when I first wrote this post the previous reply was not there - cross posting, it this happens, but in this case my post gets a posted time that is long after the other post. Whatever - you have to love computers and CMSs (a word of explantion: I've just been wrestling with a cms and cacheing issues building a web site... many hours I could have been playing music</end_of_OT_rant>

[Anyanka]

If you go to "Advanced" in iTunes, select "Create MP3 Version". That should do the trick!

Ok, thanks - I think I've got it now. I had to change some settings before I could get that option to show in the Advanced Menu. I hate iTunes...

[MTGuru]

For audio format conversions I use BonkEnc, now renamed fre:ac. It's free and open source, and it works well on my older machine.

http://www.freac.org/

[fearfaoin]

Ok, thanks - I think I've got it now. I had to change some settings before I could get that option to show in the Advanced Menu. I hate iTunes...

Care to share? I've been trying to get that
working in iTunes for awhile.
EDIT: Nevermind I finally found it on Apple's
site of all places. You have to change your
Import Using... settings, which sounds like
it should just pertain to CD ripping. Oh well.

For audio format conversions I use BonkEnc, now renamed fre:ac. It's free and open source, and it works well on my older machine.
http://www.freac.org/

Spiffy, thanks for that. How do they get by
the Fraunhofer MP3 encoding fees? Do you
have to point to the lameenc library as with
Audacity?

[MTGuru]

How do they get by the Fraunhofer MP3 encoding fees? Do you have to point to the lameenc library as with Audacity?

Yep, 'zackly.