I'm back to using Sound Forge regularly but there is this issue that keeps bothering me. Whenever I open a m4a file I can't save it as m4a, I have to "save as" to mp4. Can you please fix this? Thank you for your great work.
m4a is a proprietary Apple format. IOW, it can be created only by Apple products or, possibly, software from a different manufacturer includes the licence to create such files (assuming Apple offer a suitable licence).
Given the above, I doubt that Magix would consider obtaining such a licence since it would be highly likely to involve increasing the cost of the software.
This web page gives rather more information about the format.
Wouldn't it be possible for us to manually edit the file ending in the AAC format template? Now it is not possible. As SP said, the format is compatible, mp4 is already supported by SoundForge, the problem being only with the file extension used.
I believe you can change the extension mp4a to mp4 and so make a file playable; I'm honestly not sure the reverse is true.
Jeff
For me the reverse is true as well. Both are interchangeable at least when working with VLC or Studio One (my use cases). However if I open a m4a file with SoundForge, edit it and save it, I can only save it to mp4 so it is annoying that I have to manually rename it to m4a again so the links are not broken in my Studio One projects. I wonder if this could be done by selecting the extension name in the AAC template.
As was mentioned, I have encoded audio only MP4 files (AAC codec) and changed the extension to <.m4a>. I have also used the Nero AAC encoder which has GUIs with the <.m4a> option. There are two GUIs for Nero that I am aware of. FFmpeg is another AAC encoder option and there are a few GUIs for that. Nero and FFmpeg are allegedly the best sounding encoders, but my old and abused ears can't hear any difference, all other factors being equal.