Wayne and Layne

Convert M4A into MP3 with GNU/Linux

I ripped some CDs with iTunes, but accidentally used their silly M4A format. Using the free FAAD program included in my debian install, I was able to use this Bash snippet to convert the files to mp3:

for i in *; do faad -o - "$i" | lame - "`basename "$i" .m4a`.mp3"; done

Be sure to include the double-quotes around the $i, otherwise filenames with spaces might cause errors.

Update: I figured out a way to add recursive multithreading support. Check it out!