Playing M4A files

So, I’ve found myself sitting on a massive mountain of music in M4A format—basically everything I've pulled from Apple Music.
And when I say massive, I mean I'm looking at about 100 gigs of files here, though I won't go into the details of where all that data came from.
My goal is to actually play this stuff through a dedicated media player, ideally using Winamp.
I've spent some time scouring the web for a specific plugin that might handle this, but so far, I've come up completely empty-handed.

Is there an actual decoder out there that can help me?
More importantly, is there a way to convert these files to MP3 while strictly preserving the original audio quality without any degradation?
Thanks in advance.

Which version of Winamp are you running? Starting from v5.12, the built-in MPEG-4 decoder handles MP3/MP3 audio formats natively—so you don't have to deal with any annoying extra plugins.

Look, nothing converts to MP3 without losing some quality, but honestly, you probably won't even notice the difference.

I've got this latest version installed right now.
It's 5.5, if I recall correctly.

But looking through everything, I can't seem to find anything specifically for this build.

Any chance you could drop a link somewhere for me?

There isn't actually a plugin for that anymore—ever since version 5.12 rolled out, the support is just baked right into the software itself. Have you checked your options under preferences in the file types list to see if .MP3 shows up there?

I have it.
But it won't actually play anything; I try to open a track and it just refuses to launch.

Edit: Alright, so I uninstalled Winamp and installed this
but it’s still being stubborn and won't work.😢

Benjamin King2, any chance you can help me out? 🙂
It seems like you're the only one here who actually knows what they're doing with this stuff.

Maybe just try a basic QuickTime install—you might actually need an Apple codec to make this work.

I’m just using standard QuickTime at the moment.
It’s what I’m playing through right now, but honestly, the software is beyond irritating.

The biggest headache is that I can’t have more than one track running at a time; since my entire work environment revolves around music, isn't it just ridiculous that I have to manually click through every single song?

And look, I’ve been sticking with Winamp for about three years now, so I’m really not looking to jump ship to some other player.
It’s fast, it’s reliable... and unlike most of the other junk out there, it actually works without constant glitches.

Fantastic.
I managed to get 🙂 😁

That patch actually works; I just needed to rename the file first (total rookie move on my part)
Thanks, Benjamin King2 👍

Edit: Even Last.fm is picking up the data correctly.
Absolutely brilliant!

Man, as long as it actually works—I’m still rocking Winamp 5.32 and it plays everything perfectly without needing a single extra plugin. 😕