m4a not playing in Music App on MacBook Big Sur/MacBookPro Monterey

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Level 1

8 points

m4a not playing in Music App on MacBook Big Sur/MacBookPro Monterey

Quicktimeplayer, VLC, Finder, Preview App are all fine with with all my ALAC coded files in a m4a container. If I add the files to Music App the cannot be played. After some short stutter Music App jumps to the next titel in the list until it finds one it can play without problems.

All these files were converted recently from WAV and WMA sources to ALAC using HumanMedia Audio Converter.

Apple Support was saying m4a file extension is not supported by Music App?

I cannot believe this is true since other m4a- files converted the same day using the same tool are played fine!

Any idea why Music App is rejecting to play these files?

Posted on Apr 27, 2022 10:40 AM

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Answer 1

ed2345

Level 9

63,566 points

Apr 27, 2022 5:01 PM in response to weberk027

Sounds like a finicky converter. Convert the WMAL to WAV, make sure the WAV plays fine in Music, and then convert the WAV to ALAC.

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Answer 2

weberk027 Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 27, 2022 12:08 PM in response to weberk027

On one file not playable by Music App we see the following meta data output:

Apple file command is saying:

terminal > file 01\ Titel\ 1.m4a                                  
01 Titel 1.m4a: ISO Media, Apple iTunes ALAC/AAC-LC (.M4A) Audio

mediainfo is saying:

 /opt/homebrew/bin/mediainfo 01\ Titel\ 1.m4a 
General
Complete name              : 01 Titel 1.m4a
Format                  : MPEG-4
Format profile              : Apple audio with iTunes info
Codec ID                 : M4A (isom/iso2)
File size                : 5.52 MiB
Duration                 : 56 s 295 ms
Overall bit rate mode          : Variable
Overall bit rate             : 823 kb/s
Album                  : Advents- und Weihnachtslieder
Track name                : Titel 1
Track name/Position           : 1
Recorded date              : 0
Writing application           : Lavf58.20.100
Cover                  : Yes

Audio
ID                    : 1
Format                  : ALAC
Codec ID                 : alac
Codec ID/Info              : Apple Lossless Audio Codec
Duration                 : 56 s 295 ms
Bit rate mode              : Variable
Bit rate                 : 787 kb/s
Nominal bit rate             : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s)                : 2 channels
Sampling rate              : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                : 16 bits
Stream size               : 5.28 MiB (96%)
Default                 : Yes
Alternate group             : 1

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Answer 3

weberk027 Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 27, 2022 11:03 AM in response to weberk027

It seems that the files originally using WAV and converted to ALAC are playing fine in Music App on MacOS.

But the files originally encoded in WMA (Windows Media Audia Lossless (WMAL) and converted to ALAC are not playing fine in Music App on MacOS. VLC says that ALAC was encoded using Lavf58.20.100 encoder.

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m4a not playing in Music App on MacBook Big Sur/MacBookPro Monterey

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