# MP3 to M4A

Convert MP3 to M4A for Apple devices and smaller files at the same quality. Free, no signup, and nothing is uploaded.

Canonical page: https://filetity.com/mp3-to-m4a

## Capabilities

- Free: Yes, with no watermark and no page limit.
- Account required: No. There is no account system.
- Processed on device: Yes. The file is read by your browser and never uploaded. There is no server to send it to.
- Formats: MP3 in. M4A out, AAC audio, at a quality you pick.
- Limits: This is a second lossy encode of audio that was already lossy, so it is worth doing for compatibility rather than for quality.
- Mobile: Yes, on any modern mobile browser. Large files are limited by the memory the phone gives the browser.
- Offline: Yes, once the page has loaded. The tool keeps working with no network connection.

## Questions

### Why would I convert away from MP3?

Two reasons. Apple software and hardware handle M4A more comfortably, particularly for ringtones and audiobooks, which want an M4A specifically. And AAC is more efficient, so if you are going to re-encode anyway, the same size sounds better. If nothing is asking for M4A, keeping the MP3 is the better call.

### Will it sound better than the MP3 did?

No. Nothing can add back what the MP3 already discarded, and this adds a second round of lossy encoding on top. What you get is a file that is as close to the MP3 as AAC can manage, in a container Apple software prefers. Convert from an original if you have one.

### Can I make an iPhone ringtone with this?

This gets you the M4A, which is the format an iPhone ringtone needs. Getting it onto the phone is the other half, and it involves renaming the file to .m4r and importing it, which is a step Apple keeps moving. Trim the clip first, since a ringtone has a length limit.

### Is M4A the same as MP4?

The same container with a different extension by convention: .m4a signals audio only and .mp4 signals there is video too. Software generally treats them identically, and naming an audio-only file .m4a is what stops a media player trying to open a window for a video that is not there.

### Do the tags come across?

No. Title, artist and artwork live in ID3 frames inside an MP3 and in a different structure inside an M4A, and what is converted here is the audio itself. A music library manager will re-tag a folder in one pass, which is less work than doing it per file anywhere.

## Related tools

- [M4A to MP3](https://filetity.com/m4a-to-mp3): Convert an M4A or AAC file to MP3, which plays on anything.
- [Audio Converter](https://filetity.com/audio-converter): Convert audio between MP3, M4A, WAV and OGG, on your own device.