PCM and Apple Lossless Music

[IonPowr]

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USB storage device exFAT, FAT, or FAT32, NTFS file system with max. four partitions

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[terence]

The format is fine as the pcm read it and played the flac and wav files..... It just wouldn't play Apple lossless. Confusingly, m4a files can be either Apple lossless or AAC.

 

[lolli]

I have a similar problem with WMA files, they used to play totally fine on my Macan GTS from 2017 , but now it works with Flac or Mp3 but not WMA. Most music I have is in WMA because I have ripped it from CD long time ago with a Bang & Olufsen home System.

 

[pm4s]

Apple Lossless should be a file with a .m4a extension. According to the owners manual, that should be fine.

File extension

.mp3;.wma;.asf;.m4a;.m4b;.aac;.flac;.mpg;.mpeg;.avi;.mp4;.m4v;.mov;.wmv;.3gp;.mkv;.ts;.mid.xmf;.mxmf;.rtttl;.rtx;.imy;.ogg;.webm;.wav

.m4a is an mpeg-4 audio container, it can contain lossy AAC or lossless ALAC
.m4a are unprotected audio files (no DRM), protected (DRM) files are .m4p
Going ONLY by the list quoted above it would appear Macan only supports lossy AAC, no support for lossless ALAC, I will copy 2 .m4a files (1 AAC & 1 ALAC) on a usb drive tomorrow and let you know the result
If you are not sure what codec your .m4a (or any other container) files are encoded with I recommend MediaInfo.

 

[terence]

For everyone's information, I ended up batch converting apple lossless (.m4a) to FLAC files using dbpoweramp (free for 21 days I believe) and it works file in the Macan. If you don't want to do that, I think it works if you use the PCM to play files on your phone (works for my Google pixels).

 

[pm4s]

So as suspected the Android OS (Android Automotive) has no native support for ALAC, I assume they do not want to support their arch rival Apple (even though Apple made the format opensource in 2011 if I remember correctly. The lossy AAC and lossless FLAC files played normally, the lossless ALAC produced an error.
Thinking I was smarter I thought ok no native support lets load a 3rd party app, I know the Macan has a limited store as I did download YouTube. Scrolling through a long list of useless apps/games I was shocked when reached the end and did not find VLC, checked 3 more times then admitted defeat.
To cut a long story short NO Apple Lossless in the Macan.

 

[IonPowr]

So as suspected the Android OS (Android Automotive) has no native support for ALAC, I assume they do not want to support their arch rival Apple (even though Apple made the format opensource in 2011 if I remember correctly. The lossy AAC and lossless FLAC files played normally, the lossless ALAC produced an error.
Thinking I was smarter I thought ok no native support lets load a 3rd party app, I know the Macan has a limited store as I did download YouTube. Scrolling through a long list of useless apps/games I was shocked when reached the end and did not find VLC, checked 3 more times then admitted defeat.
To cut a long story short NO Apple Lossless in the Macan.

Great troubleshooting! Did not realize that .m4a secretly existed in 2 forms. You've saved many folks much frustration.

Time to set up a FLAC library.

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