Apple Lossless

[Mercutio]

There's some dumbass on a Torrent site I use who keeps posting neat stuff in Apple Lossless (.m4a) format.

Apple Lossless appears to require iTunes for playback, or a program called "dbPowerAmp", which I have never heard of, to reencode to a decent format. I've tried installing filters and codecs that should make Apple Lossless play, but these files ain't playing. Even VLC fails me.

Does anyone know of any other way to open an m4a file?

 

[CougTek]

I think Foobar2000 can play those. At least it is among the formats it lists in its installation for modifying your MIME settings.

http://www.foobar2000.org/

 

[sechs]

M4A is the MP4 container. It is also used by the likes of AAC.

ALAC is an awful monster, akin to WMA.

Thanks to |33+ 4axors, there is help:

http://craz.net/programs/itunes/alac.html

 

[Stereodude]

Well, the good news is that this moron is posting in a lossless format so you can at least turn them into something acceptable without a quality loss.

 

[GMac]

If the files are straight AAC files (m4a extension), then the more recent versions of Winamp should play them fine (5.1 and up certainly do).

GM