iTunes Mac does import a .caf without errors, but it doesn’t show up in the list and consequently, you can’t play it. Dunno what’s happening.
The Finder can play the .caf with the “preview” function.
Audacity 2.1.1 imports the .caf and plays it. Other audio tools play the file without any problem.
iTunes isn’t a valid test, I’m afraid.
BTW producing a .caf is a bit of a PITA. Audacity’s export works in no way I could figure out. Sox doesn’t either. Nor any other audio editor I have lying around.
The only thing that seems to work, is the command line “afconvert” tool. And that one isn’t really documented. The options lack from the man page, fi.
CAF is a container format, so can contain various audio codecs.
Audacity can export CAF using the “Other uncompressed files” choice, with options for using PCM, float or *-Law audio. The new feature in libsndile 1.0.26 will be that CAF can contain ALAC.
iTunes is fine with Apple Lossless in an M4A file, but doesn’t understand any audio in a CAF container.
using Thinktink’s 3rd party encoder at winamp, you can convert or create apple lossless files (ALAC) really easily, to either m4a or CAF.
however, winamp will only play the ALAC in a m4a file. i did however manage to get VLC to play the ALAC CAF without any problem. (afaik, winamp will play a CAF containing a wav)
does Audacity have any plans to adopt the GPL v3 license? and if not, why not? i only ask for curiosities sake. (and of course, b/c adopting v3 would allow native direct ALAC m4a exports)
i hope my question doesn’t sound combative, i guess i’m more just curious as to how / why devs decide on one license over another?
Audacity pre-dates GPL v3, so for early versions v3 was not an option.
There has been discussion in the past about changing to GPL v3, but we would need to ensure that the license terms for all libraries used by Audacity uses are compatible with v3. If any are incompatible, then alternatives would need to be found, plus extra development and testing to get Audacity working with the replacement. I’m not sufficiently familiar with GPL v3 to know whether the benefits would justify the amount of work involved.