AP m4a Files Now Not Accepted by Apple Music

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cegreen
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2008 3:00 pm
Location: Pennsylvania

AP m4a Files Now Not Accepted by Apple Music

Post by cegreen »

MY QUESTION: HOW DO I GET M4A FILES FROM AP TO WORK WITH APPLE MUSIC?

Something has changed somewhere.

Recordings saved as m4a files from AP 2.8.13 on an M1 Mac Mini running Ventura 13.6.1 aren't recognized by Apple Music 1.3.6.14.
This never used to be an issue.

If I make a recording using AP and do Save As or a Split According to Markers and specify m4a as the format, the resulting files are ignored by Music.

After many hours of troubleshooting and testing, here's what I know:

1. An m4a file created with AP in June of this year works fine with Music. Invisor reports the format of this file as ALAC.

2. An m4a file created today with AP does NOT work with Music. Invisor reports the format of this file as fpcm.
The same fpcm file opens and plays normally in QuickTime Player without a problem.
If I export the file from QTP to a new m4a file, Invisor now reports the format as AAC LC, and it DOES work with Music.
Files saved from AP as mp4 or aif work fine with Music. Only m4a files have a problem.

What is going on?

markw
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2016 1:11 pm

Re: AP m4a Files Now Not Accepted by Apple Music

Post by markw »

Not seeing that here I don't think..., although it’s true I’m on different hardware and macOS.
But I don’t think I’ve come across FPCM as a sound encoding type?
PCM though, yes. But I didn’t think AP could output to PCM, I’ve never seen it offered and it’s not listed in the hand book of supported types.
Can you give your exact .m4a export and encoding setting that are giving you an fpcm file?
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Martin Hairer
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Re: AP m4a Files Now Not Accepted by Apple Music

Post by Martin Hairer »

m4a is a container format that supports a number of different ways of encoding the sound, like ALAC or AAC. You can choose the encoding by clicking on "Settings" in the file savings dialog. As far as I am aware, nothing has changed recently in the way Amadeus treats m4a files (although the list of available encodings is provided by the operating system and can change from one version of macOS to another), so I suspect that you simply saved the two files with different settings. (Or, more likely, that the defaults have changed for some reason.)

cegreen
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2008 3:00 pm
Location: Pennsylvania

Re: AP m4a Files Now Not Accepted by Apple Music

Post by cegreen »

Thank you! That was the problem. Somehow, the Settings for Saving As .m4a had become set to "Uncompressed" instead of "MPEG-4 AAC". When I corrected this, all was well again. I have no idea how that change happened, but I'm very glad to finally have it working again. Your assistance is greatly appreciated!

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