South Africa C4 user Posted June 21, 2020 Share Posted June 21, 2020 Over the last couple of months, I have found that my music sometimes cuts out when playing from my NAS. I have around 4,000 or 5,000 tracks on the NAS. I have been able to identify that it is certain tracks only (so far I have identified 2 problem tracks but suspect there must be about 50 problem tracks given how often we experience the problem). Every time I go to either of these tracks, C4 will stop playing right there and then. At first I suspected disk corruption but that cannot be the case as I can play the same track via iTunes no problem. The 2 tracks that I have identified are both m4a tracks (but so are a further 1,000 or so of my tracks and all the other ones that I have tested play just fine). These 2 tracks definitely used to play just fine via C4 and the files have not been changed since I loaded them on to the NAS a few years ago. I am baffled! Any help would be much appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THE L1ZARD KING Posted June 21, 2020 Share Posted June 21, 2020 Curious if you are seeing the same problem I was seeing a few months ago. Like you I suspected the track was corrupted somehow as the vast majority of my library was M4A, and some tracks even writhing a single album played and others refused via C4. I was using DLNA rather than NAS but sounds similar. Out of desperation I converting one of the problematic M4A tracks to MP3 and it played just fine. Ultimately I ended up converting all my M4A tracks to MP3 with equivalent compression and left my FLAC files alone. This ended up solving the problem for me. While ultimately a workaround I didn’t have the energy to pursue it further since everything is working fine now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted June 21, 2020 Author Share Posted June 21, 2020 1 hour ago, THE L1ZARD KING said: Curious if you are seeing the same problem I was seeing a few months ago. Like you I suspected the track was corrupted somehow as the vast majority of my library was M4A, and some tracks even writhing a single album played and others refused via C4. I was using DLNA rather than NAS but sounds similar. Out of desperation I converting one of the problematic M4A tracks to MP3 and it played just fine. Ultimately I ended up converting all my M4A tracks to MP3 with equivalent compression and left my FLAC files alone. This ended up solving the problem for me. While ultimately a workaround I didn’t have the energy to pursue it further since everything is working fine now. That is intriguing. I suspect my problem is probably identical to yours. Thank you! I converted one of the problem tracks to mp3 and it played fine... but I don’t want to convert the other one as then my dealer has nothing to work with. What I really don’t get is that it is only some of the m4a tracks that are a problem. Others play just fine (for now). Is there an easy way to convert all m4a tracks on a drive to mp3? The 1,000 m4a tracks are all over the place in different directories. Some sub-directories contain both mp3 and m4a files (different tracks). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THE L1ZARD KING Posted June 21, 2020 Share Posted June 21, 2020 It’s been a couple months (and I removed it after conversion) but I think I used an app called dBpoweramp which supported batch conversion. I was able to point it to a parent folder and have it convert everything underneath. I had everything organized so I had it put the converted files in the source directory then wrote a quick bash script to find and delete the M4A files.https://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm South Africa C4 user 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted June 28, 2020 Author Share Posted June 28, 2020 On 6/21/2020 at 10:12 PM, THE L1ZARD KING said: It’s been a couple months (and I removed it after conversion) but I think I used an app called dBpoweramp which supported batch conversion. I was able to point it to a parent folder and have it convert everything underneath. I had everything organized so I had it put the converted files in the source directory then wrote a quick bash script to find and delete the M4A files.https://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm Thanks for this. A great tool which I have used to convert and “fix” a few hundred of my m4a files. Having now confirmed that the problems is that some (about 1/3 of my m4a files) won’t play on Control4 anymore - they used to so something definitely changed in the last year (probably in the last 6 months) - I feel quite perplexed. What is annoying is that converting files means they need to be Re-scanned and they disappear from play lists. I’ve converted the majority of the files that are not in any of my playlists but have less appetite to do the same for the next 700 or so files as I know (based on logic and testing) that these are easy to convert to mp3s but recreating hundreds of songs in 10 or 15 playlists will take many hours (probably days). It would be nice if C4 would simply releases a patch that fixes this issue. interestingly, the problem seems to be totally random. For instance, I will have an album that is all m4a which I will have ripped or downloaded on the same day (4 or 5 years ago) and some files will play just fine and others won’t play at all. I cannot find a common denominator for the issue (have considered file size, bit rate, meta data etc.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THE L1ZARD KING Posted July 24, 2020 Share Posted July 24, 2020 I experienced the same behavior as well, were only specific songs from albums wouldn't play. For playlists I use the Apple Music app, and then export them for my DLNA folder. I converted the files in the same directory as the original file and kept the name. I then using an exported playlist I opened the M3U files in a text editor and did a find/replace on the file extension then re-imported them back in Apple music to get the two in lock-step again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted July 24, 2020 Author Share Posted July 24, 2020 5 hours ago, THE L1ZARD KING said: I experienced the same behavior as well, were only specific songs from albums wouldn't play. For playlists I use the Apple Music app, and then export them for my DLNA folder. I converted the files in the same directory as the original file and kept the name. I then using an exported playlist I opened the M3U files in a text editor and did a find/replace on the file extension then re-imported them back in Apple music to get the two in lock-step again. Nice! My dealer and country rep have been able to replicate the problem, so I am currently hoping for a C4 fix. Interestingly, they replicated the issue (using the identical m4a file) where another CA10 was the director and not where an EA3 was the director, so it is not an issue on all controllers / setups... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THE L1ZARD KING Posted July 24, 2020 Share Posted July 24, 2020 Glad they were able to replicate it. As a data point I experienced the issue on an EA5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted July 24, 2020 Author Share Posted July 24, 2020 2 hours ago, THE L1ZARD KING said: Glad they were able to replicate it. As a data point I experienced the issue on an EA5. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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