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| Name | M4A | MP3 |
| Full name | M4A - Audio-only MPEG-4 | MP3 - MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III |
| File extension | .m4a | .mp3 |
| MIME type | video/mp4 | audio/mpeg, audio/MPA, audio/mpa-robust |
| Developed by | International Organization for Standardization | Fraunhofer Institute |
| Type of format | Media container | Digital audio |
| Description | MPEG-4 Part 14 or MP4 is a digital multimedia container format most commonly used to store video and audio, but can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images. M4A stands for MPEG 4 Audio and is a filename extension used to represent audio files. | MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is an audio coding format for digital audio which uses a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio streaming or storage, as well as a de facto standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on most digital audio players. |
| Technical details | Audio-only MPEG-4 files generally have a .m4a extension. This is especially true of non-protected content. M4A is often compressed using AAC encoding (lossy), but can also be in Apple Lossless format. | The use of lossy compression is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording and still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio. An MP3 file that is created using the setting of 128 kbit/s will result in a file that is about 1/11 the size of the CD file created from the original audio source. |
| Associated programs | Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, MPlayer, Media Player Classic, VLC Media Player, K-Multimedia Player | VLC media player, MPlayer, Winamp, foobar2000. |
| Wiki | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_14 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3 |