AAC, MP3 and WMA File Formats
AAC was developed with the cooperation and contributions of companies including AT&T Bell Laboratories, Dolby, Fraunhofer IIS, Sony and Nokia, and was officially declared an international standard by the Moving Pictures Experts Group in April 1997. It is specified both as Part 7 of the MPEG-2 standard, and Part 3 of the MPEG-4 standard. As such, it can be referred to as MPEG-2 Part 7 and MPEG-4 Part 3 depending on its implementation, however it is most often referred to as MPEG-4 AAC, or AAC for short.
M4P is the Protected AAC File. AAC is the audio layer from the follow-on format to MP3. The .M4P extension is AAC purchased from Apple's Music Store (iTune) and is protected by a Digital Rights Management scheme.
MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio storage, as well as a de facto standard encoding for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players.
MP3's use of a lossy compression algorithm is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording and still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio for most listeners, but is not considered high fidelity audio by most audiophiles.
Windows Media Audio (WMA) is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft. The name can be used to refer to its audio file format or its audio codecs. It is a proprietary technology which forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The original WMA codec, known simply as WMA, was conceived as a competitor to the popular MP3 and RealAudio codecs.
Apart from Windows Media Player, the WMA format can be played using MPlayer, RealPlayer, Winamp (with certain limitations—DSP plugin support and DirectSound output is disabled using the default WMA plugin), and many other software media players. The Microsoft Zune media management software supports most WMA codecs, but uses a variation of Windows Media DRM which is used by PlaysForSure.
From AAC to MP3, AAC to WMA and AAC to WAV
NoteBurner AAC Audio Converter is an excellent audio conversion tool that can help you transcode AAC format to MP3, WMA and WAV formats. Working with iTunes, NoteBurner AAC Audio Converter can convert AAC to MP3, AAC to WMA and AAC to WAV. NoteBurner AAC Audio Converter is able to convert iTunes M4P and M4A to WAV and unprotected WMA formats.
NoteBurner AAC Converter is a program that can be used to convert AAC, DRM protected WMA, audiobooks, WAV raw files to MP3, DRM-free WMA and WAV. It operates a little differently than the other products we reviewed because it is a virtual CD burner. It must be used in conjunction with a media player that can burn CDs because it makes the media player “burn” the song as a file on the hard drive instead of onto a real CD.
But the thing that really makes NoteBurner AAC Converter useful, and bumped it up to the top of the list, is its ability to convert DRM protected music files into regular MP3 files. This is a perfect solution for people who purchase their music online but have compatibility issues with their MP3 player.
Features Set of NoteBurner AAC Audio Converter: NoteBurner’s features depend largely on the abilities of the media player you are using. NoteBurner AAC Converter can control the bit rate, sampling rate and channels, but it doesn’t do much else because it operates differently than the other audio converters in this review.
NoteBurner AAC Audio Converter allows audio tag editing and can also extract audio signals from video files by burning them on the virtual drive. But its best feature, and the one that makes it stand out in our review, is the DRM removal that is indispensable when you’re having music compatibility issues.
