Advantages:
- M4A file is compressed while with lossless quality, which means you get smaller file with
original quality.
- M4A audio can be set as iPhone Ringtone directly just by renaming the file extension from
M4A to M4R.
- As the M4A audio file is not protected, so it can be easily streamed or distributed with no
licenses or payments.
Disadvantages:
- Poor compatibility: developed by Apple Inc., M4A is mainly applied to iTunes, iPod and
other Apple devices and can’t be widely played on many other popular devices.
What Players and Devices Can Open and Play A M4A File?
iPod, iPhone, iPad and other Apple devices; media players like Apple's own products
iTunes, Quicktime; and some other limited M4A players also can play M4A files including
Windows Media Player, BlazeDVD, 5KPlayer, VLC, Roxio Creator, KSP Sound Player, etc
M4A vs MP3: Which One Is Better?
M4A vs MP3: M4A is generally regarded as the successor to MP3 but compared with MP3,
M4A can compress audio with the same bit rate in smaller file size. M4A format files
typically have stereo bit rate of 128kbps, 192 kbps or 256kbps. By the way, Bit rate is the
amount of data that is conveyed per unit of time.
In the aspect of quality, an M4A file with ALAC codec has the best original sound quality.
Even M4A (AAC) delivers better quality than MP3 audio at the same bit rate. As for the file
size, it is also related to the bit rate, the larger bit rate, the larger file size, the better sound
quality. To put it another way, if you try to get the same sound quality, you need 256kbps bit
rate when encoding with MP3 while only need 192kbps with M4A, as a result, you'll get a