m4a is also known as AAC - it's Apple's "native" format. It's a compressed, lossy format as is MP3. When you convert from one to the other, additional sound quality is lost.

One choice to make MP3 files from AAC ones is iTunes. Another choice that's much more flexible (converts from and into most formats known to man) is Foobar. Both are free. Both are easy to use but with a beginning learning curve as you figure out the menu trees and features.

Thank you SnidelyWhiplash, I will have my laptop on tomorrow to download Foobar. Interface looks like just what I need.

Cheers

When you go to convert your m4a to mp3, Foobar may ask you to point it to "lame.exe".

If you find that's the case, you'll need to grab the lame binary, extract it, and place "lame.exe" somewhere/anywhere convenient. I put mine in Foobar's component directory. (C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000\components on my machine)

I grabbed a link for the lame binary from this Hydrogen Audio thread: https://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=91060 That link being: http://www.rarewares.org/mp3-lame-bundle.php

Pointing Foobar to "lame.exe" should look something like this (possibly minus the ".exe" extension):

I agree with chuggerguy, lame.exe does need to be downloaded and pointed to from within foobar. It's a short task, a few minutes or less.

After you've done the download (and remember what folder you put it into), the first time you try to trigger a file conversion from within Foobar, you'll get a question and a folder exploring window asking you "Where is lame.exe?" That will only happen the first time, not with subsequent iterations.

thanks for the heads up on that file. I'm glad you explained.. I would have been puzzled when that came up and never would have figured that out. thanks for the instructions.