Transferring to and playing on iOs without iTunes

[Eggy2103]

That file won't play on my phone, my wife's phone or my ipad. When you press the dots at the lower right of the screen it cycles through and then displays "32-bit 48kHz Stereo PCM".

If I pick a file that does play then doing the same thing cycles through to eventually display something like"16-bit fp 44.1kHz 259kps AAC".

Every file that won't play displays the same thing. As the main difference appeared to be the PCM instead of AAC being displayed I assumed it was that. The only other real difference is the 32-bit at the start but I assumed that shouldn't make a difference. All the files on the NAS have the same extension *.m4a, as they came out of my iTunes library, that doesn't mean they are the same bit rate, frequency, etc.

[blaubär]

That file won't play on my phone, my wife's phone or my ipad. When you press the dots at the lower right of the screen it cycles through and then displays "32-bit 48kHz Stereo PCM".

If I pick a file that does play then doing the same thing cycles through to eventually display something like"16-bit fp 44.1kHz 259kps AAC".

You're mixing up two different things. Neutron does display the input and the output format.

For the file you provided Neutron shows "16-bit fp 44.1 kHz 320 kbps AAC" for the input format ( the value for kbps may change during play )

Screenshot 2024-06-23 184539.png (18.18 KiB) Viewed 757 times

and it shows "24-bit 48kHz STEREO PCM" for the output format ( the bit-depth and sampling rate are device-specific )

Screenshot 2024-06-23 184552.png (17.92 KiB) Viewed 757 times

Every file that won't play displays the same thing.

As a matter of fact EVERY file will display PCM for output. Because Neutron does transform EVERY file to PCM ( with the single exception of direct DSD, which isn't an issue here). If not, please provide an example file that doesn't.

[blaubär]

As to the question why this file can be played by Neutron but won't be played if you try that via your network server, I suggest the reason to be found somewhere in the latter's configuration.

[blaubär]

That file won't play on my phone

I've merged your topic into an older one, with some tips and hints about how to deal with iOs

[Eggy2103]

An update on this, after reading the responses, and thanks to all for that.

I went back to the NAs and adjusted the 'compatibility' settings, as in turned them all off. These are the settings that are supposed to improve compatibility with devices which don't support certain file types, and to my knowledge should not have any effect if the playback is supported in the original format. Whether there is an issue with the handshaking and compatibility reporting I don't know, however by disabling all that support I am now able to play back everything without issue.