How to decode AAC (.m4a) audio files into WAV?

On Ubuntu, I use avconv on the command line:

avconv -i input.m4a output.wav

You can also use FFmpeg with the same syntax, simply replacing avconv with ffmpeg.

This can do every M4A in a directory, combined with a for loop:

Linux:

for f in *.m4a; do avconv -i "$f" "${f/%m4a/wav}"; done

Windows (directly in the command prompt):

FOR %G IN (*.m4a) DO avconv -i "%G" "%~nG.wav"

Windows (in a batch file):

FOR %%G IN (*.m4a) DO avconv -i "%%G" "%%~nG.wav"

If you want a GUI, you may consider WinFF, which is a GUI for FFmpeg.

To decode from AAC to WAV, you can use FAAD2, which is a command-line utility.

faad -o output.wav input.aac

ffmpeg -i inputFilename.m4a OutputFilename.wav

check out further ffmpeg commands to convert directly to a desired format (mp3 / ogg / aac, ..)

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