Apologies if this is not in the right place. Not sure if it should be here or in 3rd party plugins.
Anyway, I have some m4a files that I want to convert to ape but I get the following error message "Could not load info (Unsupported format or corrupted file) from: C:\Documents and Settings\My Documents\Come With Us\01 Come With Us.m4a".
I checked under preferences/converter and the necesary mp4 (Nero) encodong preset seems to be there. I tried to edit the preset and there was a prompt to download Free Nero Digital Audio Encoder, which I did. But I still got the same error message when trying to convert.
As always, any help is greatly appreciated.

I'm confuse..

You want to convert M4A files to APE and not the other way around, right?

Is your M4A files are Apple lossless? if so, you will need foo_input_alac.

If it's not apple lossless, why bother convert them to ape?

you don't need nero (itunes) encoder, but ape encoder

[edit]

and there is not option for ape converting if standard f2k
you have to make it manualy

Buktore, yes m4a to ape. I can't remember how I ended up with some m4a files, must have been way back when. I assume they are Apple Lossless as I was using iTunes at the time, but not sure how to tell (files say .m4a but nothing relating to Apple). Anyway, the reason for converting to ape is that I am now archiving my music library and compression is good in that format.
2E7AH, I already added ape encoder manually and have been converting to it from WAV files for a while now so I must be missing something to do with m4a as Buktore suggests. Thanks for your help guys and I'll let you know how I get on.

i suppose you use MAC console encoder for APE, which accepts only WAV files for encoding

[edit]

well, i just try that one, and is seems to work just fine - no need for WAVs

m4a -> ape

params: %s %d -n2000 (normal mode)

To save some confusion..

- You said that you successfully convert some WAV to APE with foobar. How about other format? Try convert something like MP3 to APE with your current method in foobar. If it work fine then this is not the source of the problem.

- Does your M4A file play fine without any problem in foobar? If it does it should convert them without problem. If it not, there are 3 possibility that I can think of..

1. Your file is Apple lossless. In that case just install foo_input_alac and it should work.
2. Your file is DRM protected. There's no way to convert them with foobar since foobar doesn't support DRM protected files.
3. Your file is corrupted. I'm not sure is there a way to make it work if this is the case.

Sorry, should have given you both a bit more background.
Buktore, m4a files do not play in foobar so I'll just go ahead and install foo_input_alac. Other formats (wav, flac etc) convert successfully to/from ape.
2E7AH, the reason I have wav files is that I am currently ripping my vinyl with Audacity which only exports to wav and mp3.
Anyway, I'll let you know how I get on later today. Thanks for your help.

Edit:
Above install worked a treat. Thanks for your help.