MP4A is Technically an Apple AAC standard. Windows version of VLC has an audio defect issue when playing back MP4A format. And i believe it is caused by an endian issue. PowerPC versions of VLC on the mac do not exhibit mp4a issues. Windows X86 does. Please do not trivialize the information i am giving you by asking what segment of code because i do not have the time be happy i tested this and identified the problem at all. Also do not tell me because i dont post audio codec information what i have to say is useless. I know the support game and will not enterain any attempt to put the ball in my court.
I have seen VLC developers do this constantly for those who had issues with MKV format. I will inform everyone here how to fix the MKV issue. Some people have been experiencing issues with the MKV format in Videolan due to the preload directory feature. For some reason the code is detecting perfectly good mkv files as bad files and hanging vlc. You must disable this feature in vlc by going into preferences and under demuxers and matroska, untick preload directory. VLC team should also disable this feature by default until someone can correct the preload directory code. It identifies perfectly good mkv files as bad.