Alternatively, programs such as iTunes, VLC media player, and QuickTime can also be used to open and play WAV files.ĭue to a WAV file’s higher, uncompressed quality, they are suitable for importing into music editing, production, and manipulation programs. The default player for opening WAV files is Windows Media Player. Their quality, however, does surpass that of M4A and MP3. WAV files are much larger than M4A and MP3 files, making them less practical for consumer use on portable players. WAV is the result of IBM and Windows iterating a Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF). Waveform Audio (WAV) is the most-popular digital-audio format for uncompressed audio files.

Users can also preview M4A files by highlighting the file and pressing the spacebar.Īdditionally, M4A opens in VLC media player, Adobe Premiere Pro, Elmedia Player, Winamp, and a host of other programs.ĭeveloped by: ISO/ IEC, Moving Pictures Experts Group For Windows users, the default program is Windows Media Player. For Apple users, iTunes is the default program to open M4A files. M4A files open in most well-known, audio-playback programs, including iTunes, QuickTime, and Windows Media Player. M4A files are smaller in size while simultaneously better in quality than MP3 files, with which it shares the most similarities, in comparison to all other audio file formats. MPEG 4 Audio (M4A) compresses and encodes audio files by using one of two coder-decoder algorithms: Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) or Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC).

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