I have an m4a audio file and would like to identify the settings that were used to create the recording and determine the resulting file size. Is there a command or program that will display the settings?

The existing file, when loaded into Audacity, shows "Mono, 32000Hz, 32-bit float"; however, when I use these settings to export an equivalent audio file, the file size is almost double. It would appear that I am missing a critical setting(s)!

2 Answers

Try ffprobe <filename> on each file. Compare the results.

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Media information tools such as ffprobe will provide information on the nature of the media, which may include format, encoder used, bitrate, duration, sampling frequency, etc. However, it will never show you the "settings". Simply because "settings" are defined by the encoder, and can be different between different implementations of the same encoding.

Thus, writing out the file to a file with comparable length may require a little experimentation with the compression settings of the codec you use to export the file. If the size is double, you will need to increase compression settings until the resulting file size matches your expectations. When increasing compression settings, audio quality decreases. So check whether the quality of the resulting file is acceptable for your goals.

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