I recently downloaded my first album off of Itunes (No other choice), however since it's in the m4a format, I can't play it on my MP3 player. I can burn it to an audio CD just fine, but it looks like I need some sort of conversion software to finish the job. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any free versions out there that will convert from m4a to MP3 and convert the whole file without buying the "full software" version. Either I haven't found the right program or it's not out there, but any help? (I'm running Windows Vista in case it matters)
If you can burn it to CD, then you can use Windows Media Player to rip it back off, just change the Rip Settings Format to Mp3. Kinda backward approach but it should work just fine. If you are the curious type who installs program trials, well Easy CD-DA Extractor has a 30 Day Trial... a co-worker of mine uses an OLD version of this program, but it does have an audio file converter. As I don't use it myself and have never installed this trial I can't promise you anything... Good luck. http://www.poikosoft.com/download.html
I tried that right away, and it didn't work, as Itunes identified it and played it itself without giving me a choice. However, I tried it again just now, since I had since closed Itunes, I was able to rip it with Media Player. So, thanks for that, in a way!
There is a problem with that as there is going to be even more loss in quality. You're taking a compressed audio format, putting it on a CD in that quality, then deconverting it again. Check out iPodlounge.com, as they have tutorials and suggestions on directly deconverting m4a audio back to MP3 directly.
http://www.nch.com.au/switch/plus.html this is a great program. I have the free version and it does everything i need it to do and quickly. Hope that helps! (running vista here as well)
