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Note about embedded coverart
#1
Disk space is cheap and I have gotten in the habit of ripping tracks to FLAC and embedding coverart as a Vorbis Comment Picture Block. This has always worked well for me.

FYI, while investigating several users' unrelated issue with .m4a files I came across this two-week old comment in the MPD Issues log, posted by the MPD maintainer himself, in response to a user who wasn't getting the coverart returned from his .m4a files:

Quote:MPD currently supports embedded pictures in FLAC files and in ID3v2 tags. Your file has neither.

MPD reads M4A files using the FFmpeg library, and that decoder plugin currently doesn't support embedded pictures. So this is a missing feature. Your file will be helpful with implementing and testing the feature for MPD's FFmpeg plugin.


Regards,
Kent
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#2
Is there any benefit in using m4a rather than flac?

Just curious.
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#3
(07-15-2020, 11:01 AM)suzywong Wrote: Is there any benefit in using m4a rather than flac?

Just curious.

Insufficient information. M4A is just a container format. You still have to decide what you'll put in it. Popularly, it's used to contain AAC-encoded audio or for ALAC-encoded audio (but could contain other). 

AAC is a lossy encoder. As denoted by the 'L' in their initialisms, ALAC and FLAC are lossless encoders. 

So, if the question is about M4A/ALAC vs FLAC, then the sound quality should be indistinguishable to us mere mortals. 

It's the other stuff with sources, players, and software tools which will make the difference for a user. If you're an iTunes fan, you're going to want to stick with M4A/ALAC. I, for one, prefer FLAC because its non-proprietary and my tools and players are happy with it.

Regards,
Kent
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