m4a doesn't work

Please see tracks 5,6,7,8 at https://www.westfordchorus.org/testing-2

m4a audio files are working on my test site, so I’m not sure what the issue is. Can you paste the block of shortcodes you are using into your reply here on the forum? – ensure you use the [code] button to add the backticks at the beginning & end so the formatting isn't changed by the forum.

Here’s code for album, and for tracks 4, 5, and 6 at:
https://www.westfordchorus.org/testing-2

‘[audioalbum title=”Westford Chorus” detail=”Music from 2004 to 2015″ ]

[audiotrack title=”Winter Wonderland” songwriter=”Smith” mp3=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Winter-Wonderland1.mp3″%5D

[audiotrack title=”Holly Carol” songwriter=”Fissenger” mp3=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Holly-Carol.m4a”%5D

[audiotrack title=”Swingin At Santa’s Place” songwriter=”Shaw” mp3=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Swingin-At-Santas-Place.m4a”%5D’

It looks like the problem may be that the url of each m4a file has been used as the value for an mp3 shortcode parameter rather than an m4a parameter.

Try using an m4a parameter instead of these mp3 parameters. eg:

[audiotrack title="Holly Carol" songwriter="Fissenger" m4a="https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Holly-Carol.m4a"]

Yes. That fixes the problem of the control bar displaying. It makes sense. You should add a sentence to your documentation that the prefix to the URL is the filetype.
Thank You.

Now that I have all nine audiotracks displayed in the playlist, I have ANOTHER problem:

If I start 6 audiotracks, but do not listen to them completely, I cannot start the last three that I select. It is a question of quantity started, not sequence in starting them.

How can I allow all nine tracks to be started, but not listened to completely.
Try it at: https://westfordchorus.org/test-a-album/

Tracks 2 & 4 aren’t playing, but all of the others seem fine for me. Please copy & paste the shortcodes you’re using into the forum – (don’t forget to use the [code] button)

If tracks stop working, I can always restore them by refreshing the browser page. I want the plugin not require a page refresh to continue clicking on tracks to play them. Here are all of the shortcodes.

‘<h2>Audio Album</h2>
[audioalbum title=”Westford Chorus” detail=”Music from 2004 to 2015″ ]

[audiotrack ?title=”Have Yourself a Merry Christmas” songwriter=”Martin ” mp3=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Have-Yourself-A-Merry-Little-Christmas.mp3″%5D

[audiotrack ?title=”Faure Requiem” songwriter=”Faure” m4a=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Faure-Requiem-I.m4a”%5D

[audiotrack ?title=”The Road Not Taken” songwriter=”Randall Thompson – in Frostiana?” mp3=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/The-Road-Not-Taken.mp3″%5D

[audiotrack ?title=”Winter Wonderland” songwriter=”Smith” mp3=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Winter-Wonderland1.mp3″%5D

[audiotrack ?title=”Holly Carol” songwriter=”Fissenger” m4a=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Holly-Carol.m4a”%5D

[audiotrack ?title=”Swingin At Santa’s Place” songwriter=”Shaw” m4a=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Swingin-At-Santas-Place.m4a”%5D

[audiotrack ?title=”Fruhlingsfeier” songwriter=”Mendelssohn” m4a=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Frühlingsfeier.m4a”%5D

[audiotrack ?title=”A Girl’s Garden” songwriter=”Randall Thompson – from Frostiana” mp3=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/A-Girls-Garden.mp3″%5D

[audiotrack ?title=”Celtic Christmas” songwriter=”Snyder” mp3=”https://westfordchorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Celtic-Christmas.mp3″%5D&#8217;

I can’t reproduce the issue. All of the audio files on your page play with no problem for me on Safari OSX (except track 4 which appears to have an incorrect path defined as it returns a 404 when pasted into the browser address bar)

Do you get the same result in different browsers, Operating Systems and devices?

Yes, track 4 is misspelled. I’ve fixed it.

Thanks for looking with Safari on OSX. I find that
With Chrome on PC, it plays tracks 1 thru 6 and won’t play 7,8,9,
it will also play tracks 9 through 4 and then won’t play 1,2,3
and it will play 6 tracks at random order before refusing to play more.
Refreshing the page will allow it to play any 6 tracks before refusing to play more tracks.

With Safari on PC, it works perfectly – no refresh required.
With Firefox it won’t play track 2 but will play all the others many times.
With Internet Explorer it works perfectly.
With Chrome on Samsung phone it won’t play tracks 2,3,8,9 first time through
the list, but will then play all tracks except 2 thereafter

Please investigate on PC browsers.

I don’t have a PC currently since my old acer gave up the will to live so I can’t do any windows testing.

Can you make a test page with the same files embedded using WordPress default [audio] shortcodes so I can how they behave like that?

Also try making versions of each files in the different supported formats (mp3, m4a, ogg) and specified each in the shortcode using the same syntax as the [audio] shortcode so each browser can have a fallback version. I have used a free OSX app called mediahuman audio converter to convert audio files for my own projects, but there are a few alternatives.

Sure,
Page test2 has single track directly from the WP medial library
as well as playlist from the WP media library

Page test-a-album has the cubecolour playlist.

On the page with single [audio] shortcodes, tracks 5 & 10 don’t play at all for me on Moz OSX. The same tracks also don’t play in the playlist.

Your media files need to all work with the [audio] shortcodes as the audio album [audiotrack] shortcode is simply a wrapper to the [audio] shortcode that adds extra formatting.

All my shortcode tracks work. But…
With 10 single [audio] shortcodes, ANY six selections will play, but not 7 selections. For example:
selections 1-6 will play, but not 7 until browser window reset
selections 10-5 will play but not 4 until browser window reset
selections 2,4,6,8,10,3 will play but not the rest, until browser window reset

Safari does not have this problem, Chrome, Firefox, and IE have the problem.

What can you suggest?

With 10 single [audio] shortcodes, ANY six selections will play, but not 7 selections.

This appears to indicate a general issue on your site, not directly related to the audioalbum plugin. I have not encountered this before and I have not been able to reproduce this issue for myself – either on my test site or on your page. As it the issue occurs when the audioalbum plugin is taken out of the equation I have to set this to resolved.

I would suggest you keep your page with the [audio] shortcodes online and post a link to it with an outline of the issue in the general ‘how-to & troubleshooting’ forum. where more people should see it and someone else may have encountered something similar, and if so may be able to offer a possible solution.
If you can get the issue fixed when using the [audio] shortcodes, the wrapper [audiotrack] shortcodes should also work.

SUCCESS: I have found the solution.

AVOID M4A audio files. Use MP3 format instead.

WordPress pages with audio playlsts and individual players can become frozen (as described above) if M4A files are used.

Everything works perfectly if MP3 audio files are the only filetype used. In addition MP3 files are smaller.

And when downloading from the web, the vast majority of listening devices will be unable to benefit from the better quality audio reputedly offered by M4A files.