The VideoLAN Forums

Hi there,
Since I updated VLC from 2.0.3 to 2.0.4 my M4A music files sound terrible - its hard to describe, they sound as if I was playing old-school disc records that have scratches on the surface. I had to downgrade my VLC again. The problem does not occur with MP3.

Thank you for fixing this.

Best,
BH

Can confirm this bug on Win32 aswell. ALAC audio inside M4A files sounds like a mix of being played at an irregular (mostly too fast) speed and generally garbled.

The nightly build vlc-2.0.4-20121017-1427 does not appear to have this issue. Not sure if that was built before or after the 2.0.4 release.

(As a sidenote, also trying out the nightly vlc-2.1.0-git-20121021-0003-win32, it had even worse problems with ALAC/M4A files: Other than a few high-pitched sparkling sounds, it didn't output any useful audio whatsoever. OGG/MP3 were fine.)

Let me know if I can help debugging this further.

I can add to this as well that it is messed up ... if anyone wants, I have the logs from playing the exact same file with 2.0.3 and 2.0.4

Stephen

Hi there,
Since I updated VLC from 2.0.3 to 2.0.4 my M4A music files sound terrible - its hard to describe, they sound as if I was playing old-school disc records that have scratches on the surface. I had to downgrade my VLC again. The problem does not occur with MP3.

Thank you for fixing this.

Best,
BH

Please share the file

uploading this m4a would be illegal in my country... any idea how we could circumvent this problem?

I have uploaded a file called 01 Danny Elfman - Frankenweenie Disney Logo.m4a to illustrate the problem

Stephen

OK, this is ALAC too.

OK, this is ALAC too.

Yes ... I convert all my CDs to Apple Lossless

Ticket opened.

Ticket opened.

Would you like the logs from 2.0.3 and 2.0.4 when playing this track?

This could not hurt

I've been encountering the same issues since upgrading to 2.0.4 on Mac OS X 10.8.2, Windows 7, and now Windows 8. (Not that that information is all that helpful.)

THis is helpful

Can confirm this bug on Win32 aswell. ALAC audio inside M4A files sounds like a mix of being played at an irregular (mostly too fast) speed and generally garbled.

This is exactly what my ALAC files are doing since the upgrade to 2.0.4. Is this bug being worked on or do I have to revert to an older version?
Thanks for any helping in fixing this frustrating change as I almost always rip to M4A.

Hi guys, until this is fix for this, is there a link to 2.0.3 version?

On our ftp, like usual...

Hi.

Can I ask about about what sound level you are using in vlc when you have this problem?

I had the same thing with vlc 2.0.3 rel and dowloaded 2.0.4 rel right now to see if there was any difference. What I found out was that I had left the vlc volume at 125%. When I turned it down to 100% my music was playing fine.
I tried to turn up the volume to 150% and it sounded like a radio channel with extreamly bad signal.
What I also found out is that when a song had a "flat" part with small variations in the tones it could be ok even with the volume at 150%, but when it started to be more going on it got bad again.

Also trided to play with 50 and 75% volume and this also played fine.

I was playing music in .m4a.

Try to play with volume at 100% or less in vlc??? Do you have the same problem then? This solved my problem.

Hi.

Can I ask about about what sound level you are using in vlc when you have this problem?

I had the same thing with vlc 2.0.3 rel and dowloaded 2.0.4 rel right now to see if there was any difference. What I found out was that I had left the vlc volume at 125%. When I turned it down to 100% my music was playing fine.
I tried to turn up the volume to 150% and it sounded like a radio channel with extreamly bad signal.
What I also found out is that when a song had a "flat" part with small variations in the tones it could be ok even with the volume at 150%, but when it started to be more going on it got bad again.

Also trided to play with 50 and 75% volume and this also played fine.

I was playing music in .m4a.

Try to play with volume at 100% or less in vlc??? Do you have the same problem then? This solved my problem.

Forgot to say that this was on win 7, but thought I should say it anyway

Hi.

Can I ask about about what sound level you are using in vlc when you have this problem?

I had the same thing with vlc 2.0.3 rel and dowloaded 2.0.4 rel right now to see if there was any difference. What I found out was that I had left the vlc volume at 125%. When I turned it down to 100% my music was playing fine.
I tried to turn up the volume to 150% and it sounded like a radio channel with extreamly bad signal.
What I also found out is that when a song had a "flat" part with small variations in the tones it could be ok even with the volume at 150%, but when it started to be more going on it got bad again.

Also trided to play with 50 and 75% volume and this also played fine.

I was playing music in .m4a.

Try to play with volume at 100% or less in vlc??? Do you have the same problem then? This solved my problem.

I'm sorry but I forgot to respond! I'm afraid that in my case it had nothing to do with sound levels (on a Mac). Mine doesn't sound like a 'radio channel' with bad reception but rather "speeded up" - like playing an LP at 45rpm's.

I gave up and went to another player to play my ALAC files. AAC plays fine, btw...

2.0.5 will fix that.

2.0.5 will fix that.

So 2.0.5 released, installed. Same bug still there... Odd I think... so I go grab one of the recent nightlies (vlc-2.0.5-20121212-0203), install that, boom. Bug fixed in nightly from 3 days ago.

Is it possible that some build platform or parameter differences from nightlies to the regular release is causing this?

Still broken in 2.0.5 for me too

I can also confirm that 2.0.5 still has the problem ... flac files coveted to apple lossless no longer play properly

Lossy AAC files sound fine; Apple Lossless (ALAC) files still do not, even since updating to 2.0.5. It sounds like chipmunks when I play an ALAC file. I have converted various Apple Lossless files (ripped from CDs) to AIFF, WAV, WavPack (lossless), and FLAC using X Lossless Decoder; all of those file types work fine in VLC player. Hopefully you'll have this issue fixed in time for the next update.