Apple's file extensions don't exactly say much about what the contents
of that file actually are which adds to the confusion of trying to get
your iTunes-encoded content to play with your SqueezeBox...

First & foremost, if the file extension is ANYTHING OTHER THAN .m4a
then don't bother trying to play it because it WILL NOT WORK.

If, however, the file has the .m4a extension then it is either a AAC
(compressed) audio file OR a ALAC (lossless) file.  If its an ALAC
file, then it will play with the alac decoder described in this thread.
Otherwise, if it is an AAC file then you can follow the instructions
here: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?AAC

As you may gather from this post, the present landscape of Linux codec
tools (FAAD2 for AAC, ALAC for ALAC) makes it impossible to have
SlimServer playback a music library of both AAC and ALAC files bunched
together because SlimServer uses the file extension to determine which
codec to use (which is the same in this case).  This is not an issue on
Windows or Mac because in those cases SlimServer uses iTunes to playback
the files.

The real solution here that would save everyone a lot of trouble would
be to create a single Apple .m4a playback program which examines the
file header like iTunes does to determine if its an AAC or an ALAC
file.  This would require someone who could combine the code in ALAC
decoder for *nix with code similar to that found in FAAD2.  I'd do this
myself, but it's not really my expertise.


-- 
emeraldcityeg
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