PCM and Apple Lossless Music

[terence]

I'm brand new to the forum. Hello everyone!

Just took delivery of my 4S. So far very good. Does anyone know if the PCM can play Apple Lossless files? I put my music collection on a pen drive and plugged it in the car. The PCM reads the contents but cannot play the music (it says error). Any thoughts/experience?

Thanks in advance.

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[IonPowr]

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

 

[terence]

Thank you! I tried downloading Amazon Music and play it through the app but same results. Has anyone tried and succeeded in playing .m4a files?

 

[PrudentOcean]

Be aware that M4A files from Apple Music may be DRM-protected and not playable outside iTunes/MacOS/iOS.

Where have you played those files previously?

 

[ScottHarder]

I just tested both m4a and flax audio files. Both played fine. Macan4S/USA

 

[terence]

I put 3 files on the drive (.m4a, .flac and .wav). Only the .m4a does not play. They other play fine. Any thoughts? I'm in the UK btw

 

[ColdCase]

Do your .m4a files play on other devices or cars?

 

[PrudentOcean]

I bet the files are DRM-protected.

 

[ScottHarder]

I also suspect the .m4a files that do not play are DRM protected. The .m4a file I tested with (see post above) is not. That file does play on other devices (Mac QuickTime Pro, Sonos).

 

[terence]

I have played it on other systems (VLC on windows and android, and some others) but it's all fine. Is there a way of telling if it's DRM?

 

[PrudentOcean]

To check if a song is DRM-protected, particularly in iTunes/Apple Music, right-click the song, select "Get Info," and look under "Kind" on the Summary tab. If it says "Protected AAC audio file" or similar, it's DRM-protected.

 

[terence]

I converted the Apple lossless files to Flac and they play perfectly.

 

[ColdCase]

Dunno how you are getting media on the USB stick. But there is something about conversion and just copying files from the media folder thats different. Conversion/export removes DRM, but, last I checked, Apple doesn't allow conversion of media you didn't buy. Last I checked, when you export lossless media, you get std quality audio.

So your mileage varies.

 

[PrudentOcean]

There are third-party tools to remove DRM, but another method I have used in the past is to burn songs to a rewritable CD using iTunes — then you can rip to WAV files. Old tech and not lossless, but CD quality isn’t terrible.

 

[terence]

It's not a DPM issue. All the files are ripped from CD in the first place. I also checked on iTunes and no dpm flags. Pcm in the UK doesn't seem to play Apple lossless. I've had this problem in other android apps. I believe pcm is android based so maybe a problem. Maybe it's missing some codecs

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