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Simple fast audio conversion app – To M4A Converter
If you need to do a huge audio library conversion from MP3 to AAC, or 44100khz to 448000, etc, check out ‘To M4A Converter’ in the app store. We used it to convert a ton of files to 48khz (about 300,000). The process was taking forever in iTunes and we knocked it out with this in about 2 days.
It also has some interesting peak normalization options to bring levels up or down as needed. Very useful.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/to-m4a-converter/id1034678008?mt=12
I didn’t get paid for this. The developer did give me a beta after I purchased the app to give me the option to convert the sample rate. That beta is now officially live as of today. I was holding back to recommend publicly it until now. It’s stupid fast.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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2 Replies
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How are you finding the quality from MP3 to AAC?
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We had been getting little clicks and pops at the end of some audio files in projects that wouldn’t necessarily fade off regardless of what we did. Overall there was a mix of mp3, wav, aif, and AAC for any given project. So we went back to high quality sources everywhere we could and converted them to 320kbps 48khz AAC files with loudness adjustments (so they peaked at the same level). No more pops and clicks so far. Now we use this to batch convert WAV and AIF files automatically and dump them into Swinsian’s Watch Folder, which then loads them into the Swinsian managed library on the server.
We find the quality is better. MP3 to AAC doesn’t necessarily bring audible improvements, but I think having things in the same sample rate across the board improves performance.
One other fun fact – part of the problem was we thought that FCPX was automatcially converting MP3 files to optimize them for editing as default behavior. We were getting duplicate files on the server which was just a waste of storage space. Turns out it was how programs like Swinsian – and pretty much every other non-itunes audio library program – were written. So I reached out to the developer of Swinsian and he worked on it and gave me a beta that allows drag/drop into FCPX by creating a shortcut to the original file vs FCPX optimizing it and putting it in the optimized media folder. Swinsian isn’t on the mac app store, but it’s a great program and IMHO a bit more robust for ridiculously large libraries than any other option.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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