.m4a playback issues

[striple]

I have several 24bit/96khz albums in FLAC that play fine in VLC on both my mac and PC. However if I convert them to ALAC (to add to my iTunes library) they no longer will play properly in VLC but they are fine in iTunes. This is only for 24bit/96khz, 16bit files play with no issues at all.

Has anyone else run into this issue before? I looked around in the audio preferences and didn't find anything to solve the problem. And searching through google didn't lead to anything.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

So you mean that ALAC 24bits/96kHz do not play in VLC? Very possible, this is not a common format.

File a bugreport on trac and upload a sample.

[gruvytune]

i am also finding can't play m4a files 16 or 24bit in vlc without hearing distortion and noise.
if i convert to flac in dbpoweramp they play fine
foobar is the only thing aside from quicktime and itunes that play them
the alac codec in vlc is a problem i believe

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Yes, this will be fixed in 2.0.5

[clang]

I am having same problem as OP, even with update to 2.0.5 for OS X. Converted a 24/96 FLAC to ALAC via Max. Made sure my Audio Midi Setup settings for my Mac were 24/96 before conversion. Resulting .m4a file plays in 24/96 in iTunes (the Get Info window in iTunes confirmed the file was 24/96), but comes out horribly distorted in VLC. Interestingly, when I checked the Codec Details panel of the VLC Media Information window, it listed the file as being in the ALAC codec, but at 16/44. Given this, is it possible the bug could be related to VLC just automatically assuming all .m4a files in ALAC codec are 16/44 and configuring them as such and not differentiating between ALAC encoded files with higher sample/bit rates?

[jsd]

Same problem here. VLC 2.0.5, Mac OS 10.8.2. I make 24 bit/44.1kHz ALACs all the time of my own music and they just sound like white noise in VLC. The codec info window reports it as 16/44 so that's undoubtedly the source of the problem.

The problem is on Windows too, I sent one of my files to a musician I'm working with and he said the noise blew his head off. Ooops!

Here's a sample file
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dn2swz8zygg6i ... ter%29.m4a