Sansa Clip+ - problem playing AIFF files

[Eduard78]

Hey Everyone,

After selecting and trying to play certain AIF files, Rockbox briefly shows the loading and playback screens then skips to the next song without playing anything back. When playing back in File mode, if a whole directory is filled with AIF files, e.g. an album directory, Rockbox will rapidly try to load each song and then skip to the next.

I've narrowed down a possible cause. This only happens with AIFF files downloaded from the commercial music download site QOBUZ. All of my other AIFF files, primarily encoded with DBPoweramp, seem to work fine. Any ideas besides re-encoding all of my QOBUZ files.

Thanks, E.

[saratoga]

Check what format is in the AIFF files.

Listen to AIFF on an mp3 player doesn't make much sense though, FLAC is a better choice since its more compatible and supports proper lossless compression. 

[Eduard78]

The format is AIFF-C, which is also the same format as the DBPoweramp files, so the format per se is not the issue.

I re-encoded a few songs from Qobuz using DBPoweramp, i.e. from AIFF-C to AIFF-C, and now the files play fine. It seems to be an issue of how Qobuz encodes the AIFF files.

I also found this on the www.computeraudiofile.com forum (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f22-networking-networked-audio-and-streaming/pioneer-n50-n30-aiff-issues-20830/index2.html):

"I had a couple of hours spare this afternoon, to download the sample test AIFF files from Qobuz and compare them, using a hex editor, with AIFF files that I have that I know work with the Pioneer network audio player.

As you are probably aware by now, the data contained by the AIFF files are divided into sections known as chunks. True AIFF files must contain two chunks in particular, 'COMM' (contains basic audio stream info) and 'SSND' (contains the actual uncompressed audio sound data).

There can also be any number of optional chunks, such as 'ID3 ' (contains music category tags and art image/picture).

The normal order for these chunks is COMM, SSND, followed by the optional chunks. Qobuz for some reason have done their own thing and put the optional chunks first, which causes the unresponsive problem with the Pioneer.

However, after a bit of research, I found that the AIFF specification says that it shouldn't matter what order they are in, so the fault is strictly with Pioneer and this also explains why some other players are ok with the Qobuz AIFF files."


So, Sansa Clip+ with Rockbox seems to be behaving like the Pioneer in the above discussion and can't play back AIFF files originating from Qobuz.

[saratoga]

The format is AIFF-C, which is also the same format as the DBPoweramp files, so the format per se is not the issue.

I mean the format inside the AIFF file.  Theres like a hundred codecs that could be used.  We support linear PCM, a bunch of the non-uniform types, but certainly not all of the almost unlimited things that could be in there.