MKA (Matroska Audio)
Also known as: Matroska Audio, .mka file, mka audio
MKA (.mka) is the audio-only version of the Matroska container — a flexible wrapper that can hold many audio codecs, multiple tracks, and chapters in one file. The .mka itself is not a codec; the actual sound inside might be FLAC, AAC, MP3, Opus, or others.
- Audio-only Matroska container, not a codec
- Can hold FLAC, AAC, MP3, Opus, and more
- Supports multiple tracks and chapters
A container, not a codec
MKA is the audio counterpart to the MKV video container. Like a box, it wraps one or more audio streams, plus metadata, chapters, and tags, but does not itself define how the audio is compressed. The codec inside determines whether the audio is lossless or lossy.
This flexibility makes MKA handy for things like multi-language audio, audiobooks with chapters, or bundling several tracks, but it also means playback depends on whether your player supports both the container and the codec inside.
Playing and converting MKA
Apple Music and most phones do not open .mka natively. VLC and other open-source players handle it well. To play an MKA file more widely, extract or convert its audio to a common format like MP3, AAC, or FLAC.
Because MKA can contain lossless or lossy audio, converting to MP3 only adds quality loss if the source was lossless; either way it produces a smaller, more compatible file.